Talk of Blast Cleared From China Internet
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BEIJING — Comments heaping scorn on the official explanation of last week’s fatal blast in a schoolhouse that killed dozens of children abruptly disappeared from Chinese Internet chat sites Saturday.
The state-run New China News Agency and Premier Zhu Rongji have said that a suicide bomber set off the explosion that killed at least 42 people, most of them third- and fourth-grade students, in the remote eastern village of Fanglin.
On Friday, popular chat rooms echoed villagers living around the Jiangxi province school in deriding the suicide bomber explanation.
Internet chat rooms buzzed with words of shock and anger over villagers’ accounts that the school doubled as a fireworks factory.
On Saturday, the chat room of Sina.com was cleansed of messages directly challenging the state’s view.
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