Oil pipeline blasts kill 35 in China

Damaged vehicles lie by a street after an oil pipeline exploded, ripping roads apart, turning cars over and sending thick black smoke billowing over the city of Qingdao, east China's Shandong province on Friday

Leaked oil from a ruptured pipeline in an eastern Chinese port city exploded Friday, killing at least 35 people, injuring 166 and contaminating the nearby sea in one the country’s worst industrial accidents of the year, authorities said.
The leaked oil triggered two huge blasts, one of them tearing up concrete along a city road in Qingdao. Photos posted online showed ripped slabs of pavement, bodies, overturned vehicles and shattered windows in nearby buildings. Black smoke rose above gigantic fuel silos and darkened much of the sky.
The pipeline owned by China’s largest oil refiner, Sinopec, ruptured early Friday and leaked for about 15 minutes onto a street and into the sea before it was shut off. Hours later, as workers cleaned up the spill, the oil caught fire and exploded in two locations, the city government said.
Authorities ruled out the possibility of terrorism, but the incident remained under investigation, it said.
Calls to Sinopec’s headquarters in Beijing were not immediately answered, but the oil giant issued a statement online, offering condolences to victims.