LANZHOU, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) — Eight people have been killed and ten others injured in a fire at a lead smeltery in northwest China’s Gansu Province, work safety officials said on Monday.

    Cinders from a smelter set the workshop ablaze in Guazhou County at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, according to a statement from the Gansu provincial administration of work safety.

    The newly-built smelter, with a designed annual capacity of five tons of lead and six tons of sulfuric acid, was being debugged when the accident happened.

    Among the victims were four technicians from the institute in the southwest province of Yunnan that designed the smelter - three were killed and one was badly injured.

    The injured people, three seriously, were taken to hospital.

    Li Hongying, director of the Jiuquan municipal administration of work safety, told Xinhua the 10 injured people suffered from burns. The three badly injured people were out of danger on Monday but still needed to stay in the hospital for recovery.

    Initial investigations showed the accident was caused by either improper feed for the smelter, an oil injection failure or an error in the amount of oxygen supplied to the furnace.

    Statistics from the Gansu provincial administration of work safety show that in the first eight months of this year, 1,116 people were killed and 2,894 others injured in 3,870 work safety accidents. 

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