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Medical personnel transport a victim after an explosion ripped through a factory in Kunshan, Jiangsu province. Reuters
SHANGHAI-At least 65 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a major blast at a company in eastern China that supplies the country's massive automobile industry, state media reported.
A cause isn't immediately known for the explosion at a metal-polishing plant just outside Shanghai, in the Jiangsu province city of Kunshan, the reports said. China's official news agency Xinhua identified the plant owner as Zhongrong Metal Production Co. The company couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Photos published by China's major state-run media painted a grisly scene of the rainy morning. In some, black smoke billowed from a factory building as injured people rested on wooden pallets near firetrucks outside the gate. Photos published by state broadcaster China Central Television appeared to show burned victims with charred flesh on gurneys receiving medical help in a clinic.
The plant specialized in car wheels, apparently one of numerous suppliers to the world's largest automobile market that has drawn big investment from global makers such as General Motors Co. GM -1.12% and Volkswagen AG VOW3.XE -0.86% , as well as large state-run Chinese companies. Nearly 22 million cars were sold in China last year, compared with 15.5 million in the U.S., and numerous small companies that supply the industry with components dot cities in the Shanghai area, in both Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
A website for Zhongrong identifies it as a business founded in 1998 that specializes in electroplating aluminum auto wheel rims. A photo on the site shows the front gate of the plant with its ZR name on a wall, near where firetrucks were positioned Saturday morning.
Industrial accidents in China kill tens of thousands annually. At least four were killed early last month in the southern city Haikou at a pharmaceutical maker, an accident blamed on improper storage of materials containing alcohol, according to Xinhua. More than 100 were killed in a poultry factory fire in mid-2013.
Often the Chinese factories supply foreign multinationals. Combustible dust was cited by Apple Co. in 2012 for a deadly blast at a factory in southwestern China that supplied it with items such as components for its iPhone, as well as another supplier's plant where there were dozens of injuries.
Chinese authorities regularly publish new regulations in an effort to reduce workplace deaths. In one recent move, the policing agency Ministry of Public Security in June said that in an effort to reduce "frequent fatal factory fires" at factories where workers live on site new regulations were set on fireproof building materials, firefighting equipment and the layout of facilities.
-Yang Jie in Beijing and Aries Poon in Taipei contributed to this article.
