Newexplosions rock disaster zone

More bodies found; some firefighters remain missing.

CHINA— New TIANJIN, small explosions rocked a disaster zone in the Chinese port of Tianjin on Saturday as teams scrambled to clear dangerous chemical contamination and found several more bodies to bring the death toll to 104 from massive blasts earlier in the week.

Angry relatives of missing firefighters stormed a government news conference to demand information on their loved ones, who have not been seen since a fire and rapid succession of blasts late Wednesday at a warehouse for hazardous chemicals in a mostly industrial area.

The death toll in the ensuing inferno included at least 21 firefighters — making the disaster the deadliest for Chinese firefighters in more than six decades.

An unknown number of firefighters remain missing, and a total of 720 people were injured in the disaster in Tianjin, 75 miles east of Beijing. One additional survivor was found Saturday.

Two Chinese news outlets, including the staterun The Paper, reported that the warehouse was storing 700 tons of sodium cyanide — 70 times more than it should have been holding at one time — and that authorities were rushing to clean it up.

Sodium cyanide is a toxic chemical that can form a flammable gas upon contact with water.

Authorities also detected the highly toxic hydrogen cyanide in the air at levels slightly above safety levels at two locations in the afternoon, The Paper cited Tianjin environmental officialWenWurui as saying. But the contamination was no longer detected later Saturday and there was no obvious impact on anybody in the area, the report said.

The disaster has raised questions about whether dangerous chemicals were being stored too close to residential compounds, and whether firefighters may have triggered the blasts, possibly because they were unaware the warehouse contained chemicals combustible on contact with water. The massive explosionsWednesday happened about 40 minutes after reports of a fire at the warehouse and after an initial wave of firefighters arrived and, reportedly, doused some of the area with water.

Authorities on Saturday pulled out one survivor from a shipping container, state media reported. His identity was not immediately known.