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A suspected gas leak caused a blast at a restaurant in China's northern province of Hebei that ripped facades from buildings, damaged cars and scattered debris to kill two people and injure 26, state media and authorities said on Wednesday. The blast happened at about 8 a.m. in the county of Sanhe, state broadcaster CCTV News said, roughly 80 km (50 miles) from the centre of Beijing, the capital, where key annual parliament sessions had just concluded. Videos on social media platform Weibo showed a large orange fireball over the site, followed by billows of grey smoke, and scenes of the destroyed frontage of buildings, mangled cars, with glass shards in the streets, and some objects still ablaze. A suspected gas leak triggered the accident in a shop selling fried chicken in the town of Yanjiao, city emergency officials said in a statement, drawing rescuers, firefighters, health and other officials to the scene. “I was at home when I heard a loud blast, I initially thought it might be a gunshot,“ said Zhao Li, a middle-aged woman who lives about a kilometre from the blast site. “The loud explosion was accompanied by a crash of glass and clouds of smoke,“ said Zhao, adding that police sealed off the street to the site. Read more: #explosion #三河 #爆炸
