Five people were killed, 32 were injured and two others are still missing following a chemical plant explosion on Sunday in Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan Province, the local government said.
The injured have been hospitalized and rescuers are searching for the missing, according to a notice issued by the city government of Kunming.
An official with the city's publicity office told Xinhua that most of the injured were in a stable condition, however, several seriously injured were critical.
"Rescuers said the survival chances for the two missing are very slim," said the official who declined to give his name.
The explosion happened at a sulphuric acid plant under the state-run Yuntianhua International Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., a leading chemical fertilizer producer in China, at 3:52 a.m. on Sunday and caused a big fire.
Sulphur powder exploded and caused the fire when workers were loading them in front of a storehouse, said investigators from the city's work safety administration.
The fire was put out at around 8:00 a.m. on Sunday. Air quality in the neighborhood of the sulphuric acid plant, which is less than 40 kilometers from the downtown area of Kunming, remained normal, according to the city's environment protection bureau.
Wang Xiaoguang, vice mayor of Kunming, arrived at the site to supervise the rescue operation and told the city's factories to carry out thorough safety examinations.
The Kunming city government has set up a task force to investigate into cause of the accident and to deal with the aftermath, said Wang.
Located at the Haikou town in Xishan District in western part of Kunming, the sulphuric acid plant is run by the Yunnan Sanhuan Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Yuntianhua International Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., and it has more than 1,000 employees.
Founded in the 1970s, the sulphuric acid plant, which covers more than 50 hectares, is designed to produce 1.39 million tons of sulphuric acid and 1.2 million tons of phosphate sulfate fertilizer annually.
Source: Xinhua
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