BEIJING - An illegal stash of
mining explosives was probably to blame for a nightclub blast that killed at
least 25 people in northeast China, media reports said on Friday.
The explosion ripped through the Liaoning province club, killing at least 25
and injuring 41, including eight young girls holding a birthday party and
pedestrians outside the building.
"The explosion was so powerful that there must have been about one tonne of
explosives," the Beijing News quoted an investigator as saying.
The owner of the club, who was killed in the blast, had secretly stored the
explosives in a vault in the township of Tianshifu, which has 300-400 licensed
or unlicensed small coal mines, the newspaper quoted local residents as saying.
"The boss of the club was quite rich and ran a coal mine as well," a local
resident surnamed Liu told the newspaper.
The explosives were TNT made by a nearby factory and police also found
detonators at the site, the Beijing News said.
Pictures showed the two-storey building was completely levelled and several
cars were buried under the concrete debris.
The entertainment club comprised a bathhouse and a karaoke bar, where 13
young girls from a local department store were attending a birthday party at the
time of the blast and eight of them died, the Beijing News said.
