AN explosion at a steel plant in northeastern China on Monday killed 13 people and injured another 17, a company official said.

    The blast happened when a mold exploded at 11:30 p.m. Monday in a steel casting workshop owned by State-run Angang Heavy Machinery in the city of Anshan in Liao-ning Province, a spokesman for parent company Ansteel Group said.

    “The rescue work just finished. The bodies of the three missing workers have been found and now the local work safety bureau is working on the cause of the accident,” spokesman Song Jiachen told reporters yesterday.

    The 17 injured workers were taken to a hospital for treatment.

    All the injured workers were male. Of those between 20 and 51 years old, 11 were in stable condition with slight injuries, said Liu Yi of the Anshan municipal public hospital administration.

    The remaining six suffered burns to more than 65 percent of their bodies and were still in critical condition, Liu said.

    The mold was about 10 meters in diameter. It exploded when workers were about to finish casting a ring-shaped piece of steel, sending sand and concrete bursting through the workshop, a worker who survived the blast said.

    Angang Heavy Machinery is one of China’s largest machine manufacturers in the metallurgy industry, according to the company’s Web site. (SD-Agencies)