At a barbecue restaurant in China, a gas explosion left 31 people dead and 7 injured.

 

In northwest China, a BBQ restaurant experienced a catastrophic cooking gas explosion that left 31 people dead and 7 injured.

Chinese authorities said that a large cooking gas explosion at a BBQ restaurant in northwest China resulted in 31 fatalities and seven injuries.

On the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, people were congregating on a major street in Yinchuan, the capital of the historically Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, when the incident occurred at around 8:40 p.m. on Wednesday.

The event, a national holiday, is centered around eating rice dumplings and watching paddler teams race their boats.

Internet news source The Paper mentioned a woman only known by her last name Chen who claimed to have heard the explosion while standing approximately 50 meters (164 feet) away from the eatery. After then, she recalled witnessing two waiters leave the establishment, one of whom fell to the ground right away. The restaurant was also filled with a pungent stench of cooking gas.

The search and rescue efforts at the restaurant were finished early on Thursday morning, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management of the Central Government, and investigators were dispatched to find out what caused the explosion.

This kind of industrial tragedy is common in China, where it is typically blamed on lax government oversight, corruption, cost-cutting measures used by firms, and a lack of employee safety training.

During the nation's May Day celebration, at least nine people perished in an explosion at a Chinese petrochemical plant, and three more perished in a helicopter crash.

BREAKING: 31 people are dead and 7 injured after an explosion at a restaurant in Ningxia, China. pic.twitter.com/laDUt5h07Y

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Four people were imprisoned after a fire at an industrial trading company in central China that killed 38 people in November, and 53 miners were murdered in the collapse of a sizable open pit coal mine in the northern region of Inner Mongolia in February, which resulted in additional arrests.

Since a chemical warehouse explosion in 2015 in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 173 people, the majority of them firefighters and police officers, the central government has promised tougher safety measures. In that instance, several local authorities were charged with accepting bribes to ignore safety issues.