Mine blast 'ignited old explosives'

The size of the explosion at a mine in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region last week, which left 16 people dead, might have been exaggerated by tons of discarded dynamite left in the mountainside almost a year ago by the same blasting firm, an explosives expert has said.

Although engineers with the Guangdong Hongda Blasting Co Ltd, which handled the explosion, claimed to have used just 3 tons of dynamite, the blast triggered a 2.4 magnitude earthquake and rained stones on communities as far as 1 km away - four times the distance engineers had estimated.

Sixteen miners were killed in the incident and 53 other people were injured, 12 of them seriously.