Nine people were killed and 10 injured in a gas blast at a restaurant in eastern China, authorities said.

The explosion happened at around 11am on Sunday in the basement of a three-storey building in Xishan district in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, the city government's Weibo account said.


The blast erupted from gas bottles stored in the basement, and the shock waves shattered walls and windows of shops 100 metres (330 feet) away, the Red Star News platform quoted business owners as saying on Sunday.

Authorities said search-and-rescue operations were completed by 5pm and the injured were not lin life-threatening condition. None of the dead or injured were named."I thought it was an earthquake. Everything collapsed all of a sudden," the owner of a neighbouring hair salon was quoted by Red Star News as saying.

She said she was unhurt, but that her husband, father-in-law, two children, an employee and a customer suffered minor injuries and were taken to hospital.

The restaurant, Qin Yuan Xiao Long, employed five people, Red Star News reported. The owner " who was not on the premises at the time of the blast " arrived about 10 minutes after the blast.

The explosion happened three days after three people were killed and two were injured after a motorway flyover in Wuxi buckled and collapsed under the weight of an overloaded truck.

Investigations into both incidents were continuing, the city government said. An emergency meeting of Wuxi's safety committee was called on Sunday night, where strict monitoring of trucks and a special inspection of gas cookers were promised.

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