Huge Explosion Hits Tianjin, China

Massive explosion in a major Chinese port city has claimed at least 44 lives and left more than 500 injured, leaving a wrecked industrial landscape of burnt cars and burnt-out buildings.
According to AFP, there was a scene of shattered glass up to 3km from the blast site, after a shipment of explosives detonated in a warehouse, raining debris on the city and starting huge fires.
A monumental blast soaring into the air, walls of flame enveloping buildings, ranks of burnt-out cars, and shipping containers scattered like children’s building blocks were captured in several images.

Photos after the cut:

Paramedics stretchered the wounded into the city’s hospitals as doctors bandaged up victims, many of them covered in blood after the effect of the explosion was felt for several kilometres, even being picked up by a Japanese weather satellite.

Firefighters were already at the scene before the explosion, responding to reports of a fire, and at one city hospital a doctor wept over the remains of a firefighter still in uniform, his skin blackened from smoke, as he was wheeled past, along with two other bodies.
It was gathered that 520 people had been hospitalised, 66 of them in critical condition. Mei Xiaoya, 10, and her mother were turned away from the first hospital they went to because there were too many people.

China has a sad industrial safety record as some owners avoid regulations to save money and pay off corrupt officials to consider cheap options.