Incident

Zhou Jian and Pan Fengqin

Cause of death

Explosion

Details

A terror attack or sabotage have been ruled out as the cause of the fatal fireworks disposal blast that killed 24 and left five missing in Turpan City of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Wednesday, said a local party official.

The details were revealed by Sun Changhua, secretary of the Turpan Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China, at a press conference on Friday. The explosion happened at about 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, when authorities in Turpan city, about 180 km south to Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, were disposing of eight truckloads of fireworks in the Gobi desert, about eight kilometers from the Turpan tollgate of national highway 202.

A total of 22 people died at the scene and 10 were injured. Oneof the injured died on the way to the hospital, and two more died later during operations at Turpan Prefecture People's Hospital. Investigators later claimed that five people were missing in the explosion. Seven of the eight trucks that were used to transport the fireworks were destroyed.

A fire caused by the explosion was quickly put out. Sun said the fireworks and other materials had been stored in 904 boxes in Hongqi Fireworks Plant for 10 years. The dry weather in Turpan raised the risk of explosion and the public security authorities decided to dispose of them. The victims were said to be mainly police officers, staff of a local professional explosives disposal company and journalists covering the event.

Just 13 of the dead have so far been identified, of whom, six were of Han ethnicity and the others were of ethnic minority groups. Among the dead were Zhou Jian, a journalist from the Turpan Radio Station, and Pan Fengqin, a woman camcorder operator from the local TV station.

The identities of the other bodies are yet to be established. Rescuers had been collecting the remains from the debris and DNA tests were being carried out to identify them. According to the local party official, five seriously injured people have been transferred to a better-equipped hospital in Urumqi. Burials of seven of the victims took place on Friday.