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. 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. “It took a couple dozen firefighter trucks to put out the fire.”

The injured are in stable condition and an investigation has begun, state news agency Xinhua said. Footage from China's state television channel CCTV shows a huge fire and plumes of smoke rising from the facility. 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. In 2015, giant chemical blasts in a container storage facility killed at least 165 people in the northern port city of Tianjin. Last year, a blast at a petrochemical plant in eastern Shandong province killed eight people and injured nine.
An explosion at a chemical plant in Sichuan, China, kills 19 people and injures 12 others.