China blast zone evacuated over contamination fear, 104 dead

New small explosions rocked a disaster zone in the Chinese port of Tianjin overnight as teams scrambled to clear dangerous chemical contamination and found several more bodies to bring the death toll to 104 in massive blasts earlier in the week.
Raw: Amateur footage of huge explosion in China
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An explosion at the port in Tianjin, southeast of Beijing, could be felt kilometres away.

Angry relatives of missing firefighters stormed a government news conference to demand any information on their loved ones, who have not been seen since a fire and rapid succession of blasts Thursday at a warehouse for hazardous chemicals in a mostly industrial area.
The death toll in the ensuing inferno included at least 21 firefighters - making the disaster the deadliest for Chinese firefighters in more than six decades.
An unknown number of firefighters remain missing, and a total of 720 people were injured in the disaster in Tianjin, 120 kilometres east of Beijing. One additional survivor was found yesterday.
Two Chinese news outlets, including the state-run The Paper, reported that the warehouse was storing 700 tons of sodium cyanide - 70 times more than it should have been holding at one time - and that authorities were rushing to clean it up.

Sodium cyanide is a toxic chemical that can form a flammable gas upon contact with water.
The disaster has raised questions about whether dangerous chemicals were being stored too close to residential compounds, and whether firefighters may have triggered the blasts.
The massive explosions happened about 40 minutes after reports of a fire at the warehouse and after an initial wave of firefighters arrived and, reportedly, doused some of the area with water.