Child Labor Cited in Fatal School Blast
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Students were being forced to make firecrackers during their lunch break for teachers seeking extra cash in a rural elementary school that was ripped apart by an explosion that killed at least 37 children and four teachers, witnesses and Chinese news reports said.
The catastrophe, in which at least 27 other people were injured, occurred Tuesday at the Fang Lin Village elementary school, 480 miles southwest of Shanghai in Jiangxi province, as the third-graders inserted fuses and detonators into large firecrackers, according to parents and local officials.
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