An employee of a bus company was killed and two others were injured in an explosion at the firm's headquarters in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan , yesterday.
The blast rocked the Chengdu Bus Group building at about 11am. Wu Qingwei, 51, an assistant manager of the maintenance garage in the building, was confirmed dead in hospital. Wen Gang, 32, lost his hearing and He Jun, 24, suffered cuts.
An office on the first floor was badly damaged. Doctors and nurses who rushed to the scene told scol. com.cn, a Sichuan Daily Group news portal, that they smelled gunpowder.
Police are investigating the cause of the explosion. An officer with the Chengdu Public Security Bureau declined to comment on the phone.
If the blast is confirmed to have been a bomb, it will be the third such attack on the mainland in just over two weeks. On May 13, an explosion at a rural bank in Gansu injured more than 40 people. Police said the suspect, a former bank employee, was angry over being sacked for embezzlement.
One of the most shocking explosions on the mainland this year was carried out by a disgruntled petitioner in Jiangxi on Thursday. Qian Mingqi, a 52-year-old jobless man upset at what he claimed was an illegal land requisition, triggered three explosions in government buildings in Fuzhou .
Three people, included Qian, were killed. Six others were injured in the blasts 27 minutes apart.