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Chinese officials have delayed an operation to plug a gas well spewing toxic fumes that have killed about 200.

Emergency teams have set the well alight to burn off the poison gas as a stopgap measure, while 1,500 rescue workers search the area for survivors.

Nearly 10,000 people have been taken to hospitals suffering from poisoning and chemical burns after Tuesday's blast - the worst such incident China has had.

More than 40,000 people have been evacuated from the zone near the well.

Emergency workers searched an area of 80 square kilometres (32 square miles) in hopes of finding people alive.

Many of the 191 confirmed dead are children or elderly people who were unable to flee after an explosion at the well sent toxic gas into an area local media have called the "death zone".

Telltale smell

A local newspaper in Chongqing, the scene of the disaster, described peasants racing to get away after catching "a whiff of the smell of stinky duck eggs" - deadly sulphurated hydrogen.

Nearly 10,000 people were injured by the gas leak
Those who did not escape in time - including farm animals and fish - suffered burns to their skin and lungs from the gas.

A woman who lived within sight of the well described grabbing her five-year-old daughter and fleeing.

"But by the time they reached safety, the girl had stopped breathing," the Chongqing Economic Times reported.

The same paper reported that a local merchant had saved 400 people by making 20 trips in his lorry to take people to safety.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has ordered the local authorities to do everything possible to speed up the search and rescue operation and prevent poisonous sulphurated hydrogen gas from spreading.

Blow to industry

The BBC's Francis Markus in China says the accident is one of the most serious to hit China's natural gas industry.

Initial reports after the blast at the Chuandongbei field on Tuesday said only eight people had died.

But the death toll then rose sharply, as people succumbed to fumes in their sleep or on the roads fleeing the disaster area.

Reports of about 130 dead were followed in quick succession by news of 160 killed, then 190.

By Friday morning, 191 people were confirmed dead and rescuers were still combing the area, Xinhua said.

A nearby hospital was overwhelmed as it tried to deal with victims of the blast.

Local media showed pictures of children in a local hospital, their eyes sealed shut by the highly toxic gas, and of livestock littering the roads.

"The poisonous gas hovering in the air made an area of 25 sq km a death zone as many villagers were intoxicated by the fumes in their sleep," the China Daily newspaper said.

Accident-prone industry

Operations were going normally before the gas suddenly exploded from the side of the drill, Qian Zhijia, deputy head of the gas field, told Xinhua.

The cause of the blast is still being investigated.

China is notorious for its dangerous working conditions.

An average of more than 10,000 people a month died in work-related accidents from January to September of this year.

That figure is a 9% rise from the same period last year - despite a government campaign to improve work safety conditions.

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China is notorious for its dangerous working conditions.

An average of more than 10,000 people a month died in work-related accidents from January to September of this year.

That figure is a 9% rise from the same period last year - despite a government campaign to improve work safety conditions.

Sadly that is deemed a risk worth taking in a developing economy, by the government, employers and the workforce (who are often ignorant). Especially one which has a population of over 1 billion.

Western civialisation have a hand in these things, as we snap up cheaper electrical goods provided by this cheap labour/working practices.

Seems that Tianammin square is a distant memory to western governments/companies keen to cash in, not to mention the likes of Rupert Murdoch who go to new depths of **** kissing to get a foothold in the country (not to mention marrying a Chinese woman)