POLICE in central China have launched a manhunt for a love-lorn junk collector suspected in the axe murders of eight people, including a two-year-old boy and his grandmother, state media has reported.

A fire that swept through a nightclub in southern China killed at least 43 people, it has emerged today.

SMOULDERING incense left inside a bamboo temple as offerings to the gods was probably responsible for one of two deadly fires that killed at least 93 people in China over the weekend, authorities said yesterday.

A GAS well blow-out in south-west China turned a 10 square mile area into a death zone, killing nearly 200 people as they slept or scrambled to escape a cloud of toxic fumes, officials and state media said yesterday.

A fire that gutted a fifth-floor beauty salon in southern China has killed nine people and left eight others injured.

Tons of deadly cyanide leaked into a river in central China after a lorry carrying it overturned.

Authorities in central China have sentenced 23 people to prison terms of up to 13 years for a Christmas fire in a disco that killed 309 people, a court official said today.