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Many relief efforts were dispatched near a chemical plant in Yangcheng, China, where an explosion blew up and caused several deaths on March 21, 2019. REUTERS / Stringer

The explosion at a chemical plant in Yangcheng, eastern China, has left six people dead and thirty seriously injured, according to an interim report.

With our correspondent in Shanghai, Angélique Forget

On Chinese social networks, videos of the explosion are relayed en masse. It shows a huge fireball several tens of meters high and a thick column of gray smoke.

🇨🇳 CHINA: Powerful explosion of a chemical plant in #Yancheng, causing an earthquake of magnitude 2.2. At least 6 dead and 30 seriously injured (CCTV). pic.twitter.com/oqvjnVEZ0S

French News (@InfosFrancaises) March 21st, 2019

The explosion took place in Yancheng City, 260 km from Shanghai, in the chemical plant of Tianjiayi Chemical Company. 176 trucks and more than 900 firefighters were dispatched to the site. Sign of the violence of the explosion, the National Center of seismology reported at the same time of a magnitude 2.2 earthquake near the scene of the disaster.

In China, industrial accidents are not rare because the safety instructions are not always respected. Last November, a gas leak at another chemical plant in northern China caused an explosion and killed 23 people ... But one of the accidents that most traumatized the country is that of Tianjin in the north. suburb of Beijing in August 2015: a huge explosion in a chemical warehouse had at least 165 dead.

→ REPEAT: China: One year after the explosion, the port of Tianjin remains a ghost town