BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s eastern Jiangsu province will launch inspections on chemical producers and warehouses after a deadly blast in the city of Yancheng, according to an emergency notice published by official media on Friday.

An explosion at a pesticide plant in the province has killed 44 people and injured more than 600, the latest in a series of industrial accidents that has angered the Chinese public.

The notice, published on the news website of Jiangsu province’s Communist party, said the government will shut down any chemical firms found not complying with regulations on dangerous chemicals. </s> An explosion at a chemical plant in China has killed 19 people and injured 12, officials say.

It's not yet clear what caused the blast on Thursday night at an industrial park in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern province Sichuan, authorities in Jiang'an county said.

The blast is the latest deadly industrial incident in China, which is the largest producer of chemicals.

State news agency Xinhua says the injured are in a stable condition and an investigation into the blast at Yibin Hengda Technology is underway.

The company did not immediately answer telephone calls from Reuters to seek information.

Photographs on Chinese social media show a huge fire and plumes of smoke rising from the facility.

The fire was extinguished by 11.30pm (local time) on Thursday, the government said in a statement.

In 2015, an explosion in a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 165 people.

Last year a blast at a petrochemical plant in eastern Shandong province killed eight people and injured nine. </s> The death toll from an explosion at a chemical plant in China’s eastern Jiangsu province has climbed to 64, while 28 people remain missing, official news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday.

The authorities in the city of Yancheng, where Thursday's accident occurred, said that rescue teams were working round the clock to try and find those still missing. One survivor was rescued on Saturday morning. </s> SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - An explosion at a chemical plant in China has killed 19 people and injured 12, authorities said on Friday, the latest deadly industrial incident in the world’s largest producer of chemicals.

It comes amid a drive to strengthen industrial safety, with China ramping up checks over the last year, in the wake of some high-profile incidents at coal mines and chemical plants.

The cause of Thursday evening’s blast at Yibin Hengda Technology in an industrial park several hours southeast of Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, is not yet known, the local government in Jiang’an county said.

The injured are in stable condition and an investigation has begun, state news agency Xinhua said.

The company, which makes chemicals for the food and pharmaceutical industries, did not immediately answer telephone calls from Reuters to seek information.

Photographs on Chinese social media showed a huge fire and plumes of smoke rising from the facility. The fire, which broke out early on Thursday evening, was put out by 11:30 p.m., the government said in its statement.

A trio of three-storey buildings were reduced to their steel frames by the explosion, the Sichuan Daily newspaper said, citing eyewitness accounts.

Windows of nearby buildings were shattered by the explosion at the factory, which is surrounded by a sand and gravel plant, it added.

The plant has three production lines, making 300 tonnes per year (tpy) of benzoic acid, which is used in food preservatives, and 2,000 tpy of 5-nitroisophthalic acid, for medicines and dyes, the regional environmental protection bureau says.

China’s breakneck pace of economic growth during the last decade has resulted in a spate of industrial accidents.

In 2015, an explosion in a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 165 people. Last year a blast at a petrochemical plant in eastern Shandong province killed eight people and injured nine. </s> SHANGHAI: An explosion at a chemical plant in China's southwestern province of Sichuan has killed 19 people and injured 12, the local government said on Friday (Jul 13), the latest deadly industrial incident in the world's largest producer of chemicals.

It is not yet clear what caused Thursday evening's blast at Yibin Hengda Technology in an industrial park several hours southeast of Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, authorities in Jiang'an county said.

The injured are in stable condition and an investigation has begun, state news agency Xinhua said.



The company did not immediately answer telephone calls from Reuters to seek information.



Photos on Chinese social media showed a huge fire and plumes of smoke rising from the facility.

The fire, which broke out early on Thursday evening, was put out by 11.30 pm, the government said in its statement.



China has kicked off measures to improve industrial safety, ramping up checks over the last year, following some high-profile incidents at coal mines and chemical plants.

In 2015, an explosion in a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 165 people. Last year a blast at a petrochemical plant in eastern Shandong province killed eight people and injured nine. </s> The death toll from an explosion that ripped through a chemical plant in the eastern province of Jiangsu rose to 64 on Saturday morning, state media said, as local authorities continue searching for survivors.

The blast Thursday at the Jiangsu Tianjiayi Chemical Co., in Chenjiagang, was the latest reminder of continued industrial risks in China, which has seen several large factory explosions in recent years. The latest incident left 94 people with severe injuries and 28 people were still unaccounted for as of 7 a.m. Saturday, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the local government.

A cause has yet to be determined and local authorities were working to prevent chemical leaks, according to state broadcaster CCTV. More than 600 had suffered at least minor injuries, the Yancheng city government said on Friday.

Police have taken people into custody over the incident, according to the statement, which didn’t offer further details on the detentions.

China has been seeking to tighten safety after industrial accidents that included a massive explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin, which killed 173 people. A blast at an auto parts plant in Suzhou in 2014 killed 146 people.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, set up an investigation team Friday to determine a cause of the Jiangsu explosion, CCTV said. </s> An explosion at a pesticide plant in eastern China has killed 47 people and injured more than 600, state media said on Friday, the latest casualties in a series of industrial accidents that has angered the public.

The blast occurred on Thursday at the Chenjiagang Industrial Park in the city of Yancheng, in Jiangsu province, and the fire was finally brought under control at 3 a.m. on Friday (1900 GMT), state television said.

Survivors were taken to 16 hospitals with 640 people being treated for injuries. Thirty-two of them were critically injured, it said.

The fire at a plant owned by the Tianjiayi Chemical Company spread to neighboring factories. Children at a kindergarten in the vicinity were also injured in the blast, media reported.

The cause of the explosion was under investigation, but the company — which produces more than 30 organic chemical compounds, some of which are highly flammable — has been cited and fined for work safety violations in the past, the China Daily said.

President Xi Jinping, who is in Italy on a state visit, ordered all-out efforts to care for the injured and to “earnestly maintain social stability,” state television said.

Authorities must step up action to prevent such incidents from happening and find out the cause of the blast as quickly as possible, Xi added.

“There have recently been a series of major accidents, and all places and relevant departments must fully learn the lessons from these,” the report cited Xi as saying.

The Jiangsu environmental protection bureau said in a late Thursday statement the environmental monitoring station in the area had found no abnormal concentrations of toluene, xylene or benzene.

Concentrations of acetone and chloroform outside the perimeter of the explosion zone were also within normal limits, it added.

Jiangsu will launch inspections on chemical producers and warehouses, according to an emergency notice published by official media on Friday.

The notice, published on the news website of Jiangsu province’s Communist Party, said the government would shut down any chemical firms found not complying with regulations on dangerous chemicals.

Public anger over safety standards has grown in China over industrial accidents ranging from mining disasters to factory fires that have marred three decades of swift economic growth.

In 2015, 165 people were killed in a series of explosions at a chemical warehouse in the northern city of Tianjin.

The explosions at Tianjin, one of the world’s busiest ports and not far from the capital, Beijing, were big enough to be seen by satellites and register on earthquake sensors.

Despite repeated pledges by the government to tighten safety, chemical plants in particular have been plagued by disasters.

In November, a series of blasts during the delivery of a flammable gas at a chemical manufacturer killed 23 people. </s> China plant explosion kills seven, second blast in Jiangsu province this month

A plant explosion in China’s Jiangsu province has killed seven people, state media reported on Sunday, 10 days after a blast at a pesticide plant killed 78 people in the province and triggered a nationwide safety inspection campaign.Sunday’s blast involved a container of scrap metal that caught fire in a metal-molding plant in a bonded area in the city of Kunshan, state news agency Xinhua said. The cause of the blast which killed seven people and injured five others was under investigation, Xinhua said. The plant is owned by Kunshan Waffer Technology Corp Ltd., a Taiwan-based manufacturer of magnesium alloy injection molding products and aluminum alloy die castings. Kunshan, about 70 km (43 miles) west of Shanghai, is home to more than 1,000 technology companies and manufacturers, including many Taiwanese firms. The incident follows a deadly blast on March 21 at a chemical park in the city of Yancheng, also in Jiangsu province, that killed 78 people and focused attention on safety at small chemical firms. </s> Eight people have been killed and five injured in an explosion and fire at a chemical plant in eastern China's Shandong province. The official Xinhua News Agency said the accident was triggered by an explosion of a liquefied gas tanker in a loading area at the Linyi Jinyu Petrochemical Co.

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A fire and explosion at a chemical plant that makes fertilizer in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, China, kills 47 people and injures 640 others.