A truck loaded with 18 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in southwest China, flattening 17 village houses, killing at least 11 people and injuring dozens.
For hundreds of yards around the site of the blast, trees were stripped bare of leaves, electricity pylons were bent over and everything was covered in yellow dust, the Beijing Newssaid.
The truck blew up on a road running through the village of Shengangzhai in Yunnan province just before midnight on Monday.
Five women and three children were among the dead and 43 people were injured, eight seriously, it said. Seventeen of 66 houses damaged in the blast were destroyed.
The explosion dug a crater 18.5 metres wide and 5.6 metres deep.
Ammonium nitrate, used to make fertiliser and explosives, was used in the bomb that killed 168 people in an Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.
