65 dead, 150 injured in factory blast

Photo taken on Aug. 2, 2014 shows the factory blast site in Kunshan City, east China's Jiangsu Province. A powerful factory blast has killed 65 people and injured over 120 others in Kunshan City on Saturday morning. (Xinhua/Wang Hengzhi)

An explosion has killed 65 people and injured more than 100 others after ripping through a factory in east China's Jiangsu Province on Saturday morning, government sources said.

The blast gutted a wheel hub polishing workshop owned by Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products Co., Ltd in Kunshan City at 7:37 a.m., according to the city government.

More than 200 workers were at the site when the explosion happened. Rescuers pulled out over 40 bodies while about 20 others died in hospitals.

An initial probe indicated that the explosion might have been caused by "dust" which ignited inside the workshop, officials said.

Photographs circulated on social networking sites showing charred bodies of victims on trucks or lying on the ground as black smoke billowed from the factory.

Xinhua reporters at the scene said the blast left two large holes in the factory's wall, with large equipment and pieces of broken glass scattered around.

A local radio reporter told Xinhua that she saw a patient, whose clothes and hair were completely burned off and his body "as dark as charcoal."

A medical member of staff at Kunshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine said most of the injured suffered burns to the body and in the respiratory system.

"Every 10 minutes, an ambulance carrying the injured arrived at our hospital. It's the weekend, so we're sort of understaffed and have had to call for backup," said the staff member, who asked for anonymity.

Health officials said some of the injured have been transferred from Kunshan to nearby cities of Suzhou, Wuxi and Shanghai.

Doctors and nurses specializing in burns at Shanghai's Ruijin Hospital have arrived at Kunshan to help local hospitals, which are "crowded with injured patients," according to the hospital.

The Kunshan branch of the Red Cross Society of China has asked locals to donate blood .

Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products Co., Ltd is in Kunshan's economic and technological development zone, which is 70 kilometers away from Shanghai. Its website said the company has 450 employees and listed General Motors as a client.

The factory has been cleared and a further investigation is underway.

Officials have said the explosion was a work safety accident.

The blast followed a fire and explosion in a petrochemical company in Changzhou City in Jiangsu on Thursday evening, which did not cause casualties.