A massive gas explosion at a barbecue restaurant has killed at least 31 people and injured several more in northwestern China.
The blast tore through the Fuyang Barbecue Restaurant around 8.40pm on Wednesday on a busy street in Yinchuan, the capital of the traditionally Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, as people gathered ahead of the Dragon Boat Festival, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The explosion left many people unconscious and they needed to be carried out of the shop, according to the online news site The Paper. Victims included elderly people and high school students, it added.
Nine people have reportedly been detained including the owner of the restaurant.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for “all-out efforts” in the rescue operation and an investigation into the blast.
An hour before the explosion, employees noticed the smell of cooking gas and discovered that a gas tank valve was broken, according to Xinhua. The blast occurred while an employee was replacing the valve.
The Paper cited a woman identified only by her surname Chen saying she had been about 50 metres (164 feet) from the restaurant when she heard the explosion. She described seeing two waiters emerge from the restaurant afterward, one of whom collapsed immediately, while thick smoke billowed from the restaurant and a strong smell of cooking gas permeated the area.
The central government’s Ministry of Emergency Management said on social media that search and rescue work at the restaurant was completed early on Thursday morning and investigators were working to determine the cause of the blast.
The Dragon Boat Festival is a national holiday devoted to eating rice dumplings and racing boats manned by teams of paddlers. While the majority of Yinchuan’s population is Han Chinese, a third are Hui people, or Chinese Muslims.
Industrial accidents of this type are a regular occurrence in China, usually attributed to poor government supervision, corruption, cost-cutting measures by employers and little safety training for employees.
At least nine people were killed in an explosion at a Chinese petrochemical plant, and three others died in a helicopter crash during the country’s May Day holiday.
In February, 53 miners were killed in the collapse of a massive open pit coal mine in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, leading to numerous arrests, and four people were detained over a fire at an industrial trading company in central China in November that killed 38 people.
The central government has pledged stronger safety measures since an explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers. In that case, a number of local officials were accused of having taken bribes to ignore safety violations.
