Society

Arsonist behind Jiangsu bus blaze - police

By Qian Yanfeng (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-16 08:01

SHANGHAI - The shuttle bus fire that killed 24 people and injured 19 in East China's Jiangsu province on July 4 was apparently ignited by an arsonist who perished in the blaze, police said on Thursday.

The 57-year-old suspect, Dong Chuansheng, was an employee at the No 630 factory of the Xuefeng Steel and Iron Co Ltd run by China's largest private steel plant, Jiangsu Shagang Group. Police said the man suffered paranoid delusions and set the fire because of a grudge.

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Flames engulfed the bus and quickly turned it into a blackened shell after it passed through a tunnel near downtown Wuxi at 11:16 pm while transporting 45 employees to their night shift.

Passengers in the rear of the bus narrowly escaped by jumping out their windows. Most of the workers in the mid-section of the bus, however, were burned alive since the vehicle's air-conditioning accelerated the gas-fueled flames, and their windows could not be opened.

Relatives of the surviving victims had previously told China Daily that passengers saw a man carrying a barrel onto the bus, and that they smelled gasoline in the moments before the fire erupted.

Police said currently six out of the 19 injured have been discharged from hospital, and that the remaining 13 are in stable condition.

One relative, Liu Xifeng, whose sister suffered burns on over 50 percent of her body, confirmed he had visited his sister in the ward, and that her condition remained stable.

Talks between company officials and victims regarding financial compensation have yet to begin, he added.