Beijing: At least 16 people, including five firefighters, have been killed and 14 others injured in three major accidents in China.
Five fire fighters were killed and 14 others were injured in a warehouse collapse while trying to put out a fire in Harbin city of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province yesterday, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The fire burnt down the third floor of a market warehouse at the Beifangnanxun ceramics market at about 10 pm (local time), burying them on the second floor, the report said.
The injured were rushed to hospital. The condition of three of them was said to be critical. The warehouse was part of an 11-storeyed residential building, where the first to third floor were being used as warehouses and the rest eight floors as residential. Residents have been evacuated from the building. In a separate incident, six workers were killed after a rooftop and scaffold collapsed in central China’s Hunan Province yesterday.
The accident took place when 11 workers were finishing construction work at a machine repair workshop of a local nonferrous metal company based in Chenzhou city. Five workers were pulled out of the debris and rushed to hospital immediately, Xinhua reported. In yet another mishap, five persons were confirmed dead in a tunnel collapse in south China’s Guangdong Province, local authorities said today. The accident occured last week at the Fenghuangshan tunnel in the provincial capital of Guangzhou, where a landslide buried five workers.
The fifth body was found early this morning, the report said.
