Three maintenance workers were killed whilst working in a sewage storage cellar after a sulfurated hydrogen leak on Tuesday in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Firefighters rushed to the scene carried out artificial respiration on the workers before sending them to a local hospital, but sources at the hospital said they did not survive.

The sewage plant is located in the southern outskirts of oil-rich Karamay City. They reportedly violated safety operation requirements by entering the sewage cellar without wearing gas masks.

According to Wenzhou Maritime Bureau, one person was killed and three others seriously injured when an explosion took place in the engine room of a container vessel at sea near Wenzhou City in the eastern province of Zhejiang on Tuesday morning.

The Kaiyue, owned by a Shanghai company, was heading for Guangdong Province in south China when the blast took place at about 11:30 AM, killing one on the spot.

The injured were rushed to hospital and have been declared out of danger.

The cause of the explosion is being investigated, the bureau said. 

(Xinhua News Agency August 24, 2005)