A huge cooking gas explosion has left 31 people dead and a further seven injured at a barbecue restaurant in China, authorities in the country have revealed.
The blast, which tore through the building on a busy Yinchuan street on Wednesday evening (June 21) occurred as revellers gathered to celebrate Thursday's Dragon Boat Festival holiday, reports the official Xinhua News Agency.
The festival is a traditional holiday occurring on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar, and is celebrated by holding boat races and eating sticky rice dumplings called zongzi.
Yinchuan, meanwhile, has a population of around 2.3 million and is the capital of the traditionally Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in the northwest of the country.
Speaking to outlet, The Paper, a woman identified only by her surname, Chen, said she was around 50m from the premises when she heard the explosion.
Chen added that she witnessed two waiters emerging from the restaurant in the aftermath of the blast, one of whom collapsed immediately as thick smoke billowed from the building with the strong smell of cooking gas clearly evident.
A statement by the Central Government’s Ministry of Emergency Management on Thursday morning advised that rescue work had been completed and an investigation into the cause of the explosion was already underway.
China is no stranger to industrial accidents of this kind, with poor government supervision, corruption and cost-cutting measures often attributed to the problem, according to the Associated Press.
Last month saw nine people killed in an explosion at a Chinese petrochemical plant, whilst three more died when the helicopter they were travelling in crashed during the country's May Day holiday.
In February 53 miners died when a massive open pit coal mine collapsed in the northern region of Inner Mongolia. And in November last year, four people were detained over a fire at an industrial trading company in central China that killed 38 people.
The central government had previously vowed to instill stronger safety measures following a chemical warehouse explosion in 2015 that left 173 dead in Tianjin, many of whom were police officers and firefighters.
