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Updated: A total of 521 people have been hospitalized, including 52 critically injured, according to a latest briefing at a conference held on Thursday afternoon on the rescue work.

Updated: Eight firefighting trucks have been damaged during the rescue work.

Updated: 214 officers and soldiers form a national nuclear biochemical emergency rescue team leave Beijing for rescue work in Tianjin.

Updated: The samples collected at 5:30 am showed that the concentration of toluene, widely used as an industrial feedstock and as a solvent, has reached 3.7 milligrams per cubic meter in the air, higher than the national standard of 2.4 milligrams per cubic meter, Tianjin Daily reported.

Updated: A worker who survived the Tianjin warehouse blast said workers had not received any training in handling dangerous chemical goods.

Updated: As of 12:00 pm, the death toll has climbed to 44, including 12 firefighters. A total of 520 people have been hospitalized, including 66 critically injured.

Updated: State Council sets up investigation group for Tianjin blast.

Updated: Beijing currently experiences wind from the southwest and west, and Tianjin is located in the southeastern direction so the pollutants from the blast will go to the Bohai sea, thus having no influence on the capital, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said on Thursday.

Updated: Expert: Cyanide may have been present in Tianjin blast.

Smoke and fire are seen after an explosion in the Binhai New Area in north China’s Tianjin Municipality on Aug. 13, 2015. An explosion rocked the Binhai New Area in north China’s Tianjin Municipality at around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday. The cause and casualties are not immediately known. [Photo/Xinhua]

Huge explosions have rocked China’s northern port city of Tianjin, leaving at least 17 people dead and hundreds more injured.

Another 32 people were critically injured and 283 people are under observation in hospital.

The blast ripped through the Ruihai warehouse, which stores dangerous goods, at 11:20 p.m. Wednesday, following a fire report half an hour earlier. Fireballs erupted then ignited more explosions in companies nearby, according to rescuers.

Two firefighters were “out of contact” and another four injured during the rescue, according to the Tianjin firebrigade. There are people trapped inside the blast site and rescue operation is still going on.

The wounded have been sent to several hospitals nearby. Xinhua reporters saw blood everywhere on the floors of hospitals.

Lu Yun, head of Taida Hospital, which has admitted some 150 injured people, told Xinhua that the injuries were mostly from broken glass or stones. Some of the injuries are serious.

Smoke and fire are seen after an explosion in the Binhai New Area in north China’s Tianjin Municipality on Aug. 13, 2015. [Photo/Weibo.com]

The shockwaves were felt kilometers away, with window glass of buildings shattered.

The rolling doors and window glass of Donghai Road terminal station of Jinbin light railway, which serves as a major link between the Binhai New Area and the downtown Tianjin, were broken. Its roof also partially collapsed.

As of 3:00 a.m. Thursday, minor fires and blasts could still be seen from a far distance.

As soon as the explosion was under control, some taxi drivers and private car owners have voluntarily helped with sending the wounded to hospitals. Some hotels have provided free accommodation to residents displaced by the blast.

Latest updates on Tianjin blast

Smoke and fire are seen after an explosion in the Binhai New Area in north China’s Tianjin Municipality on Aug. 13, 2015. [Photo/Weibo.com]

The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region’s information office released details on a terrorist attack on Sept 21 that killed 10 people, including two police officers and two assistant police, and injured 54.

Forty attackers were shot dead by police or killed in suicide explosions, and two attackers were arrested in Luntai county, the Bayinguoleng Mongolia autonomous prefecture, the regional information office said on the night of Sept 25.

The multiple explosions were detonated simultaneously at about 5 pm at a bazaar patronized by local residents from ethnic groups; two police stations; and the front of a shop. Thirty-two of the injured victims were Uygurs, according to a statement from the Xinjiang information office.

A police investigation showed that the attackers were led by Memet Turson, who was shot dead by police. Memet Turson was under the influence of religious extremism since 2003 after he graduated from a vocational school, police said.

He has become more devoted since 2008. He believed the meals that his parents cooked were not halal because his parents were government workers. He even refused to attend his father’s funeral, police said.

Memet also refused to attend his brother’s wedding because the couple’s marriage certificate was issued by the government. He recruited people to join a terrorist group lead by him when he worked as a construction contractor. Memet then plotted and carried out the attack.

The investigation is continuing, local police said.

Anti-terrorism experts said the crackdown on terrorist-linked video and audio content on the Internet must intensify, as such information has fueled the spread of religious extremism and terrorist attacks in China.

Video and audio files released on the Internet by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement have spiked – from 32 files in 2012 to 109 last year. In the first three months of this year, the terrorist group released 36 such files.

Terrorist attacks in China also rose sharply last year, and the video and audio files are a direct cause of the increase, security analysts said.

On June 26, 16 terrorists launched an attack in Lukqun, a township in Turpan prefecture of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, leaving 35 dead.

The principal criminal of the gang, Ekrem Usman, said: “We watched some videos, which told us to launch jihad (holy war). We started to watch those videos in 2013.”

“He (Ekrem Usman) downloaded the video made by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which advocates jihad, to his cellphone at home, then drew people to join his group. He played the video and audio files when they held meetings and gradually developed their ideas of religious extremism,” said an officer from the Piquan county public security bureau in Xinjiang.

Terrorists from Xinjiang drove a jeep into a crowd at Tian’anmen Square in Beijing and set the vehicle on fire on Oct 28. Five people, including the three in the jeep, died, and 40 others were injured.

One of the suspects, Yusanjan Wuxuer, who participated in planning the attack, said: “Except for reading books and watching videos, I also received some materials from Usman Asan (the terrorist who killed himself in the attack). Nobody else spread the ‘ideas’ (extremist and terrorist ideology) to me.”

After an attack in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, on April 30, which killed three and injured 79 others, the ETIM released a video on how to make a briefcase bomb of the type that was used in the attack. It also claimed responsibility for it.

The “Turkestan Islamic Party”, the other name of the ETIM, released a video on the Internet referring to the Tian’anmen attack as “jihad”.

After the June 26 terrorist attack in Lukqun, the group released a statement: “It’s Allah’s order and the act of worship we must do to attack Chinese government organs and police stations and kill heretics and Muslims working for the Chinese government.”

According to Xinjiang police, several terrorist attacks against government organs occurred after the statement was released.

With the help of their own or other terrorist groups’ websites, free online storage facilities, file-sharing portals, social networking platforms and e-books, the ETIM promotes itself and spreads extremism via videos, said Yalikun Yakuf, deputy director-general of the Xinjiang public security department.

“The terrorists in China recruit new members by downloading those videos made by the ETIM and organize people to watch them, then launch terrorist activities,” he said.

“All those who participated in the terrorist attacks of ETIM have watched the videos, produced at home or abroad, that advocate terrorism, separatism or jihad,” said Li Sheng, a professor at the Xinjiang development research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Apart from strengthening related legislation to prevent the spread of the video and audio content that fuels extremist ideology and instigates ethnic conflict, the government should also promote knowledge of the laws governing such criminal behavior among the public, Li said.

“Even as we protect the Internet and citizens’ freedom of speech, we shouldn’t give opportunities to the terrorists to make use of that freedom to spread their terrorist ideas,” said Li Wei, an anti-terrorism researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

The ETIM, which advocates violence to force the separation of Xinjiang from China, has been identified as a terrorist group by China, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday discussed building an economic belt along the Yangtze River to underpin China’s sustainable economic development.

He made the remarks while chairing a meeting in Chongqing in southwest China. Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli also attended the meeting.

Officials from the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s economic planner, reported on plans for the economic belt, which will involve eleven regions including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan and Guizhou.

Li said that it has been a key pattern in the world’s economic development to start in coastal areas and then move inland along rivers to the landlocked regions, and the common experience of many developed countries in their modernization.

The Yangtze River traverses eastern, central and western regions, joining the coast with the inland, and will have unique strengths and huge potential, Li said.

The Yangtze River Delta is a key pole in China’s economic growth and the central and western regions boast the largest space for China’s economic growth, according to Li.

To build the Yangtze River economic belt is to set up a new chess game so that the coastal regions can support mutually and interact positively with the central and the western regions, he said.

Through reforms and opening-up, as well as some key projects, three “blocks” in the Yangtze River economic belt are expected to be invigorated, including the delta, city clusters along the central course and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic zone, according to Li. It can provide huge new development stimuli for more than a fifth of the country’s land and about 600 million people

Though the Yangtze River’s transport volume ranks the first among the global inland rivers, it still has remarkable potential, Li said, urging more efforts to improve the river’s transport capacity.

He also expected construction of the economic belt would help deepen reforms and opening-up, break administrative division barriers and build a modern market system along the regions of the river.

He highlighted ecological safety and warned against “pollution transfer” brought about by “industry transfer.”

Hou Yongzhi, head of the Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy under the Development Research Center of the State Council, said China’s economy must maintain a certain speed to improve people’s livelihoods and the Yangtze River economic belt could be a new economic growth pole.

The economy faces downward pressures and the decision on the Yangtze project shows that China pays much attention to the development and opening-up of the landlocked regions, while it is improving the development quality of the coastal east, Hou said.

The regions along the Yangtze are expected to accommodate industries transferred from the coastal east, deepen opening-up and boosting urbanization, Hou said.

The largest difference between the Yangtze River economic belt and other economic zones is that it joins the east, central and west in a natural way and thus can help accelerate the ongoing industry transfer and economic transformation and upgrading, said Wang Jun, an analyst with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

Video clips of two men arguing with a couple from China’s mainland after their toddler relieved herself in a Hong Kong street caused a stir online.

One clip begins with a picture of a toddler squatting while the mother holds a diaper at the child’s bottom.

Then it skips to the couple arguing with a young man in a gray T-shirt speaking in Cantonese.

The woman keeps asking the local man: “What do you want me to do?”

Her husband grabs the man’s camera and during a struggle the memory card drops to the ground and the woman quickly picks it up.

The man then accuses the couple of stealing and threatens to call the police. The woman puts the diaper in a bag and the couple try to leave, saying they are not afraid, but are stopped by the man and a local woman. Throughout the incident, the toddler is crying loudly.

Another clip shows a Hong Kong man in a blue T-shirt blocking the family’s way and the stroller pushed by the mother knocking into him.

Then the man grabs the stroller, prompting the woman to hit him on the arm. The man in the gray T-shirt is filming.

Surrounded by onlookers, the woman desperately explains to the crowd that there was a long queue at the nearest public toilet, so they had no other choice but to let their child relieve herself in the street.

“The kid was about to pee in her pants, what do you want me do?” the mother asks.

Her enraged husband repeatedly asks the two men: “Do you have a kid? Do your children take pees?”

The video clip ends when a police officer arrives.

The couple were subsequently arrested on suspicion of theft and assault, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday.

The woman was released on bail and is due to report back to police in mid-May, while her husband was released unconditionally, the report said.

The man in the gray T-shirt reportedly had been taking pictures of the toddler’s private parts which was why the father had grabbed the camera.

The video clips attracted widespread attention over the weekend although the incident occurred last Tuesday.

The Hong Kong media praised the two local men as heroes who had fought against ill-mannered mainland tourists.

On the mainland, one online poll showed that while around 20,000 people disapproved of the parents, more than 115,000 expressed support for them.

While some said the parents lacked basic public decency, the majority of online users on the mainland said their behavior was understandable as they had tried to find a toilet and the mother had used a diaper to prevent a mess.

“I saw nothing improper in the parents’ behavior. They did all they could to prevent polluting the environment. On the other hand, the Hong Kong man taking pictures of the girl’s privates seems illegal,” Da Lin from Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation posted on sina.com.

Moral high ground

Other online users condemned critics of the parents for “taking the moral high ground,” adding that to expect tourists unfamiliar with the city to find a public toilet in a short space of time was over the top.

The newspaper pointed out a Hong Kong regulation that stated no one should permit a child under 12 in their care to “obey the call of nature in any public street.”

There has been tension between Hongkongers and tourists from the mainland for some time.

A clip of a mainland couple arguing with Hong Kong passengers after their child defecated in an MTR Corporation train compartment caused outrage last year.

And when some Hong Kong residents labeled mainland tourists as “locusts” and “uncivilized,” people from the mainland accused Hongkongers of discrimination.

Over the past few months the city has seen several anti-mainlander protests in crowded shopping areas, among the favorite destinations for mainland tourists, the newspaper reported.