Clean-up work has basically ended Friday morning, 63 hours after the liquefied chlorine leakage in Huai'an City, east China's Jiangsu Province, an official with the General Administration of Work Safety confirmed.

Sun Huashan, vice director of the administration, announced rescuers had finished counteracting the chlorine by 3:00 AM Friday and the nearly empty tank was trucked to a local chemical plant at 10:00 AM for disposal.

Deputy Governor Li Quanlin of Jiangsu Province said the local environment watchdog is still closely monitoring the area. "If all indices are normal, some of the evacuees will hopefully return home tonight and all the others will be home in a day or two," he said in an interview with Xinhua.

The chlorine leak, caused by a truck collision late Tuesday afternoon, has killed 28, hospitalized 350 and forced nearly 10,000 residents to evacuate.

Rescuers dug a pond at roadside shortly after the accident to counteract the chlorine with caustic soda. The area has been under24-hour surveillance ever since.

(Xinhua News Agency April 1, 2005)