AT least 67 people were killed when part of a power station under construction in an East China province collapsed Thursday, State media reported.

    Seventy people were working at the site at 7 a.m. when a cooling tower platform plunged to the ground, trapping an unknown number of people beneath it, Xinhua News Agency said.

    President Xi Jinping urged local authorities to step up rescue efforts, treatment and follow-up work.

    State broadcaster CCTV put the toll at 67, with local reports saying one person was still missing and two others injured.

    Pictures of the scene in Fengcheng in the province of Jiangxi showed a grey mass of concrete slabs, steel girders and twisted metal splayed in a heap on the ground inside a large round structure.

    Hard-hatted rescue workers in neon jumpsuits carried bodies out from the site on stretchers wrapped in orange sheeting.

    A total of 32 fire engines and 212 military personnel had been deployed to the scene, the Jiangxi provincial fire department said on a verified social media account.

    The State Administration of Work Safety has dispatched a work team to Fengcheng to investigate the accident.

    The construction of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power units at the Ganneng Fengcheng power station began last July and was expected to be completed by early 2018, the local Yichun city government said on a verified social media account last year.

    The expansion was budgeted to cost a total of 7.67 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion), it added.

    The main investor for a previous expansion project at the plant suspended trading of its shares on the Shenzhen stock exchange Thursday afternoon, stating that “significant events” that could not be disclosed could impact its share price. Its shares had fallen 3.41 percent by midday.

    (SD-Xinhua)