China steel factory explosion kills 13

At least 13 people have been killed and 17 injured in an explosion at a major steel factory in north-eastern China, a company official has said.

The explosion occurred late on Monday at a steel casting workshop owned by state-run Angang Heavy Machinery in Anshan, Liaoning province, the BBC reported.

Chinese state media said the injured had been taken to hospital, while a spokesman for Angang’s parent company, Ansteel Group, said investigations into the cause of the blast were ongoing.

According to The Australian, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said the accident was due to a mold exploding at the workshop, though the agency did not clarify the cause of the explosion.

Rescuers reportedly found 10 dead victims of the blast on Tuesday morning, and later recovered another three bodies of workers previously identified as missing.

More from GlobalPost: China mine blast leaves 20 dead, 23 still trapped

Lax safety measures and a rush to feed demand from a rapidly growing economy mean that industrial accidents are relatively common in China. At least 20 workers were killed in November in an explosion at the Sizhuang coal mine in Quijing, Yunnan province.

A week earlier a rock burst at another mine in the Henan province trapped workers, killing 10. Nearly 50,000 people died in work-related accidents in the first nine months of 2011, figures from the State Administration of Work Safety show, according to the Agence France Presse.