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 At least 520 people were injured, more than 60 of them seriously,
the Tianjin government said on its Weibo microblog, and the official
Xinhua news agency said two fires were still burning.
Wednesday night's blasts, so large that they were seen by satellites
in space, sent shockwaves through apartment blocks kilometers away
in the port city of 15 million people. Internet videos showed
fireballs shooting into the sky and the U.S. Geological Survey
registered the blasts as seismic events.
Vast areas of the port - the 10th largest in the world - were
devastated, crumpled shipping containers were thrown around like
match sticks, hundreds of new cars were torched and port buildings
left as burnt-out shells, Reuters witnesses said.
"I was sleeping when our windows and doors suddenly shook as we
heard explosions outside. I first thought it was an earthquake,"
Guan Xiang, who lives 7 km (4 miles) away from the explosion site,
told Reuters by telephone.
 Guan, 24, said he saw flames and a mushroom cloud in the sky as he
and other residents scrambled to get out of the building.
Tianjin authorities said 12 firefighters were among the 44 killed.
The cause of the blasts was being investigated but Xinhua said
several containers caught fire beforehand. Industrial accidents are
not uncommon in China following three decades of breakneck economic
growth. A blast at an auto parts factory in eastern China killed 75
people a year ago when a room filled with metal dust exploded.
The state-run Beijing News earlier cited Tianjin fire authorities as
saying they had lost contact with 36 firefighters. By late
afternoon, Xinhua reported 18 were missing, while 66 were among the
hundreds of people being treated in nearby hospitals.
Xinhua said 1,000 firefighters and more than 140 fire engines were
struggling to contain a blaze in a warehouse that held "dangerous
goods".
"The volatility of the goods means the fire is especially
unpredictable and dangerous to approach," Xinhua said.
Several fire trucks had been destroyed and nearby firefighters wept
as they worked to extinguish flames, the Beijing News reported.
President Xi Jinping demanded that authorities "make full effort to
rescue and treat the injured and ensure the safety of people and
their property".
Xi said in a statement carried by official media that those
responsible should be "severely handled".
City officials had met recently with companies to discuss tightening
safety standards on the handling of dangerous chemicals. The Tianjin
Administration of Work Safety posted a notice about the meeting with
companies at the port on its website a week ago.
POTENTIALLY TOXIC SMOKE
Anxious residents rushed to hospitals to seek news about injured
loved ones. Dozens of police guarded the entrance of the TEDA
hospital, a Reuters witness said.
Pictures on Chinese media websites showed residents and workers,
some bleeding, fleeing their homes. Xinhua said people had been hurt
by broken glass and other flying debris. Authorities told reporters
they expected the blasts to have forced 6,000 people from their
homes by nightfall.
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Grey clouds of smoke billowed above the blast site and several
trucks carrying paramilitary police - wearing masks to protect them
from potentially toxic smoke - headed to the area.
The blasts shattered windows in buildings and cars and knocked down
walls in a 2-km radius around the site. Photographs on news websites
showed burned-out cars inside a multi-storey car park at a logistics
base at the port.
Video posted on YouTube from what appeared to be an apartment
building some distance from the scene showed an initial blast
followed by a second, much bigger, explosion. Shockwaves hit the
building seconds later.
"Our building is shaking. Is this an atomic bomb?" said a frenzied
voice inside. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeXBME2YVQo)
Despite the devastation, the port was operating normally, a port
official said. Tianjin port is the gateway to northern China's
industrial belt.
Xinhua said the explosions, the first equivalent to 3 tonnes of TNT
and the second to 21 tonnes of TNT, ripped through a warehouse.
A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency's Beijing
environmental emergency response center, as well as 214 Chinese
military nuclear and biochemical materials specialists, had gone to
Tianjin, the news agency said.
It identified the owner of the warehouse as Tianjin Dongjiang Port
Ruihai International Logistics. The company's website said it was a
government-approved firm specializing in handling "dangerous goods".
Company officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to an assessment by government environmental inspectors
published in 2014, the facility was designed to store several
dangerous and toxic chemicals including butanone, an explosive
industrial solvent, sodium cyanide and compressed natural gas.
CCTV said at least one person at a "relevant company" had been
detained.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Campbell in TIANJIN, Kazunori
Takada, Chen Yixin, Brenda Goh and Sue-Lin Wong in SHANGHAI, and
Michael Martina, Jason Subler, Megha Rajagopalan and Judy Hua in
BEIJING; Writing by Dean Yates; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick
Macfie)
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