Beijing, Shawwal 6, 1435, Aug 2, 2014, SPA -- At least 69 workers died and up to 150 were injured after an explosion and fire ripped through a car parts factory in eastern China's Kunshan city early Saturday, according to dpa. The blast hit a polishing workshop just after 7:30 am at the Zhongrong Metal Products Company, a firm specializing in electroplating of aluminium alloy wheels. State media and micro-blogging websites published photographs showing dozens of workers waiting to be taken to hospital, some lying on a large flatbed truck and others with blackened skin. Due to the scale of the accident, public buses were used as makeshift ambulances to rush injured workers to hospital, reports said. More than 200 workers were on duty at the time of the accident. An initial investigation found the explosion was probably caused by flames igniting dust in the workshop, the official Xinhua news agency quoted police as saying. Police detained two managers of the factory for questioning after the explosion, which was classed as a work safety accident. Most of the victims were young men in their 20s, said People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper. Rescuers pulled about 40 bodies from the factory and many other workers died on the way to hospital, the reports said. Most of the injured suffered burns or respiratory injuries from smoke inhalation. They were treated at hospitals in Kunshan and the nearby cities of Suzhou and Wuxi. A team of seven burns specialists from the Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, some 70 kilometres away, arrived in Kunshan to help treat the injured workers. Zhongrong Metal Products was founded in 1998 and employs some 450 people, with registered capital of 8.8 million dollars, according to a company website. Its customers include US auto giant General Motors, the company said. Saturday's explosion is the most serious work safety accident since a fire at a poultry processing plant in the north-eastern province of Jilin killed at least 120 people in June 2013. In November, an explosion in a leaking oil pipeline killed 62 people in the eastern port of Qingdao. The State Administration of Work Safety reported some 270,000 accidents and 2,549 deaths at work last year, down 8.2 per cent and 3.5 per cent, respectively, from 2012. But the Jilin fire and the Qingdao explosion were among several major accidents in recent years that prompted the government to draft a tougher work safety law in February. China has a "high incidence of workplace accidents and fails to prevent accidents that result in serious casualties," state media quoted Yang Dongliang, head of the work safety administration, as saying in his presentation of the draft law. --SPA 14:59 LOCAL TIME 11:59 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w