17 dead, 400 hurt in China port blasts

Between 300 and 400 injured people had arrived at a single hospital, according to the Beijing News, which also cited a worker at another health facility saying there were too many new patients to count.

Mei Xiaoya, 10, and her mother were turned away from the first hospital they went to because there were too many people, she told AFP.

She described how all the windows of her home and the door were destroyed in the force of the explosion.

“I’m not afraid, it’s just a scratch,” she said pointing to the bandage on her arm. “But mum was hurt badly, she couldn’t open her eyes.”

Hospital staff said most of those that arrived overnight had been discharged.

The magnitude of the first explosion was the equivalent of detonating three tons of TNT, the China Earthquake Networks Centre said on its verified Weibo account, and was followed by a second stronger blast equal to detonating 21 tons of the explosive.

It was not clear, however, what caused the shipment of explosives to detonate inside a storage container.

Two firefighters called to the scene were missing, Xinhua reported, as 10 emergency teams and 35 fire trucks battled the blaze.

Much of the area surrounding the explosion is made up of construction sites for residential and office buildings. Worker dormitories, built of flimsy sheets of thin metal, were torn apart by the blast.

At the city’s TEDA hospital, close to the blast site, Zhang Hongjie, 50, sat with his head wrapped in bandages, his arms covered with small cuts from flying glass.

“The explosion was terrifying, and I almost passed out,” he told AFP. “I’m sorry, I still can’t think straight, I’m a bit confused,” he said.