More than 100 people were killed and 38 injured in explosions that tore through four residential blocks in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, state television said today.
It said a preliminary police investigation pointed to criminal elements being responsible for the almost simultaneous pre-dawn explosions yesterday.
The television report said 108 people were killed, but did not elaborate on what criminal activities might have been behind the blasts.
One struck just a block away from the Communist Party headquarters in the heart of the capital of Hebei province 250 km (150 miles) southwest of Beijing.
It left an L-shaped, five-storey residential block of the Number 3 Cotton mill, home to at least 30 families, a pile of rubble.
Eight bouquets of flowers were laid at the edge of the rubble on Saturday morning and local people said they believed everyone in the building had been killed.
Another explosion brought down one of a line of small five-storey apartment blocks, leaving the street looking like a row of teeth with one missing.
The victims appeared to have been ordinary workers in a centre of China's declining textile industry and home to 1.7 million people.
No one living or working near the blast sites could figure out why they should be targeted.
This is an anti-government act. The Party is too corrupt, said retired nurse Liu Guiyou.State enterprises are where the big money is being stolen.
Why take out your frustrations against the government on ordinary people? Who knows, said one noodle stall owner with a sad shake of his head.
Local journalists said city mayor Zhang Erchen was fired earlier this year, accused of economic crimes .
Organised crime, wiped out in China after the Communist Party came to power in 1949, has re-emerged over the last two decades as the country has pursued a socialist market economy and opened up to the world.