Explosion tears through restaurant in China, killing at least 31

A massive cooking gas explosion at a barbecue restaurant in northwestern China killed 31 people and injured seven, Chinese authorities said Thursday.

The blast tore through the establishment at around 8:40 p.m. local time on Wednesday on a busy street in Yinchuan, the capital of the traditionally Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, as people were gathering on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The festival is a national holiday devoted to eating rice dumplings and racing boats manned by teams of paddlers.

Online news site The Paper cited a woman identified only by her surname Chen saying she had been about 50 metres from the restaurant when she heard the explosion.

Thick, black smoke and smell of gas

She described seeing two waiters emerge from the restaurant afterward, one of whom collapsed immediately, while thick smoke billowed from the restaurant and a strong smell of cooking gas permeated the area.

The Central Government's Ministry of Emergency Management said on its social media account that search and rescue work at the restaurant was completed early Thursday morning and investigators were sent to determine the cause of the blast.

Industrial accidents of this type are a regular occurrence in China, usually attributed to poor government supervision, corruption, cost-cutting measures by employers and little safety training for employees.

At least nine people were killed in an explosion at a Chinese petrochemical plant, and three others died in a helicopter crash during the country's May Day holiday.

In February, 53 miners were killed in the collapse of a massive open pit coal mine in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, leading to numerous arrests, and four people were detained over a fire at an industrial trading company in central China in November that killed 38 people.

The central government has pledged stronger safety measures since an explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers. In that case, a number of local officials were accused of having taken bribes to ignore safety violations.