Thirty-two people died in two separate accidents in China yesterday in a rural area explosion and a construction accident.
In the first of the incidents, a blast occurred at 1:12am in the village of Donggancheng, Henan Province, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Fifteen people died and nine were injured,” an official with the Henan provincial work safety bureau said, speaking by telephone and giving only his surname, Huang.
While rescue work had already been completed by noon yesterday, investigations were launched into why the tragedy took place.
DETONATORS
One report from Xinhua suggested the explosion was related to illegal storage of detonators, adding that police were targeting unidentified people suspected of having broken safety regulations.
Explosives are widely available in the Chinese countryside, where they are used for construction work, and deadly accidents happen frequently.
In the day’s second serious incident, 17 people died after a construction elevator crashed to the ground on a building site.
The accident happened at about 7:30am in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, state media and officials said.
“Sixteen people died when the lift crashed and two were seriously injured,” an official at the Changsha work safety bureau surnamed Guan said.
“One of the two injured later died in hospital,” Guan said.
He said the cause of the accident was still under investigation.
China has experienced a construction boom in recent years and new buildings continue to be erected at a brisk pace despite the global economic crisis.
DEADLY RECORD
China’s work safety record is notorious and thousands of people die every year in mines, factories and on construction sites, official sources indicate.
Partial data from the State Administration of Work Safety showed that 1,942 died in large work-related accidents in the period from Jan. 1 to Dec. 14.
The administration said 99 people lost their lives on construction sites over the period, while it did not give a figure for deaths caused by explosions.
The figures are likely to amount to a drastic understatement of the real extent of safety problems at Chinese work places, as they do not include fatalities from smaller incidents.
Official data also gives an overly rosy picture because many accidents are covered up by local officials worried that they may be punished for flawed supervision.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS