The blast tore through the restaurant at about 8:40pm (12:40 GMT) on Wednesday on a busy street in a residential area of Yinchuan, the capital of the traditionally Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, as people gathered to celebrate the three-day holiday for the Dragon Boat Festival, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
“A leak of liquefied petroleum gas … caused an explosion during the operation of a barbecue restaurant,” Xinhua reported on Wednesday, citing the regional Communist Party committee.
Seven more people were receiving medical treatment, the agency said, with one of them in a “critical condition”.
Two others had suffered severe burns, two had minor injuries and two had scratches caused by flying glass, Xinhua added.
Footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed more than a dozen firefighters working at the site as smoke billowed from a gaping hole in the restaurant’s facade.
Shards of glass and other debris littered the darkened street.
The Paper, an online news outlet, cited one woman saying she had been about 50 metres (164 feet) from the restaurant when she heard the explosion. She told the publication she saw two waiters stumble out of t the restaurant afterwards, one of them collapsing immediately.There was a strong smell of cooking gas, she said.
Nine people including the restaurant’s “owner, shareholders and staff” were held by police following the explosion, CCTV said, adding that “their assets have been frozen”.
The blast tore through the establishment at around 8:40 p.m. Wednesday on a busy street in Yinchuan, the capital of the traditionally Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, as people were gathering on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The festival is a national holiday devoted to eating rice dumplings and racing boats manned by teams of paddlers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping demanded all-out treatment of the injured and a safety overhaul after the explosion, Xinhua reported.
Online news site The Paper cited a woman identified only by her surname Chen saying she had been about 50 meters from the restaurant when she heard the explosion. She described seeing two waiters emerge from the restaurant afterward, one of whom collapsed immediately, while thick smoke billowed from the restaurant and a strong smell of cooking gas permeated the area.
The Central Government's Ministry of Emergency Management said on its social media account that search and rescue work at the restaurant was completed early Thursday morning and investigators were sent to determine the cause of the blast.
Industrial accidents of this type are a regular occurrence in China, usually attributed to poor government supervision, corruption, cost-cutting measures by employers and little safety training for employees.
At least nine people were killed in an explosion at a Chinese petrochemical plant, and three others died in a helicopter crash during the country’s May Day holiday.
In February, 53 miners were killed in the collapse of a massive open pit coal mine in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, leading to numerous arrests, and four people were detained over a fire at an industrial trading company in central China in November that killed 38 people.
The central government has pledged stronger safety measures since an explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers. In that case, a number of local officials were accused of having taken bribes to ignore safety violations.
