17 dead, 400 hurt in China port blasts

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency smoke and fire erupt into the night sky after an explosion in the Binhai New Area in north China’s Tianjin Municipality on Thursday August 13, 2015. Chinese state media reported huge explosions at the Tianjin port late Wednesday with large numbers of people reported injured. AP

TIANJIN, China – A series of massive explosions at a warehouse in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin killed 17 people, state media reported Thursday, as witnesses described a fireball from the blasts ripping through the night sky.

An AFP reporter at the scene saw shattered glass up to three kilometers (two miles) from the blast site, after a shipment of explosives detonated in an industrial zone raining debris on the city.

Plumes of smoke still billowed over buildings hours after the explosion, which occurred around 11:30 pm (1530 GMT) local time.

“The fireball was huge, maybe as much as 100 meters tall,” said 27-year-old Huang Shiting, whose house is close to the port area of the city where the explosion took place.

“I heard the first explosion and everyone went outside, then there was a series of more explosions, windows shattered and a lot of people who were inside were hurt and came running out, bleeding,” he told AFP.

State broadcaster CCTV said 17 people were killed and more than 400 hospitalized, adding in a Twitter post that President Xi Jinping had urged “all-out efforts to rescue victims and extinguish the fire”.

State news agency Xinhua confirmed the death toll, and said 32 people were critically injured.

Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily said in a post on Chinese social network Weibo that more people remained trapped by a huge fire unleashed by the explosives.

Images obtained by AFP showed residents, some partially clothed, running for shelter on a street strewn with debris.