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Man over Deadly Cave Village Blast Charged
Chinese prosecutors have brought charges punishable by death against a man set detonated 30 tonnes of explosives that killed 80 cave dwellers last month, officials said on Wednesday.
Ma Hongqing, 51, ignited the explosives illegally stored in a rival villager's cave dwelling in the Shaanxi province village of Mafang, officials said.
"We have brought explosion charges against Ma," an official of the people's procuratorate in the Shaanxi province city of Yulin, 400 km (250 miles) north of the provincial capital of Xi'an, told reporters.
The blast occurred when Ma, a former maker of illegal explosives under extreme pressure from debt collectors, tried to steal explosives from the cave of a man with whom he had business conflicts, the Shaanxi-based Huashang Bao newspaper said.
When he was unable to penetrate a locked grate guarding the explosives, a desperate Ma stuck a seven-metre (23-foot) fuse through the grate to ignite the explosives instead, the paper said.
Ma originally wanted to kill himself, but he changed his mind and fled the scene after lighting the fuse, it said.
He was arrested earlier this month.
The pre-dawn blast on July 16 also injured 98 and razed or damaged 311 cave dwellings, according to the newspaper.
Two other men, including the owner of the illegal explosives and the man who sold Ma the fuse and detonators used in the blast, are under arrest and expected to stand trial soon, the court official in Yulin told reporters.
They are charged with "illegal production, storing and selling of explosives", he said.
"It's my personal view that all three culprits will be severely punished. It's not hard to imagine so after what happened in Shijiazhuang," the official said, referring to deadly dormitory blasts in March in the northern industrial city.
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