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Angry Villagers Dismiss Official Report on School Blast [CND, 03/09/01] A school girl who survived a classroom explosion that left at least 42 people dead in Jiangxi Province revealed that she and other pupils had been forced to make firecrackers in the school in order to fund the school, Reuters reported on Friday. 13-year-old GAO Yun, who was slightly injured in the blast, told Reuters by telephone that she and her school mates had been making firecrackers in the school for the past four years. "Pupils in high grades make the barrels and those in low grades attach the fuses," she said. "If we produce more, our teachers give us rewards like pencils or notebooks. But if we don't meet our targets we are not allowed to go home," she added. Officials in Wanzai County blame the cutback on education funding from the central government, which forces schools to fund themselves. They point out that the practice is common in poor mountainous area, which is well known for producing fireworks. The incident is an embarrassment to the leaders who are currently meeting in the National People's Congress (NPC) session underway in Beijing. Earlier on Thursday Premier ZHU Rongji told Hong Kong reporters in Beijing that investigators blamed the blast on a mentally disturbed man whose wife had divorced him. He denied there were explosives stored in the school. All state media appear to be sticking to Mr. Zhu's explanation. The official Xinhua News Agency reported the death toll at 42, which contradicted to 43 death reported by local officials, which includes 39 children and four adults. Xinhua said a 33-year-old villager named LI Chuicai, 33, carried two bags of firecrackers into the grade 3 classroom and detonated the explosives, killing himself and bringing the school building down. Police found a notebook and a sheet of paper in his home with written words like "I will sacrifice myself ... blast all burn all...kill scores of them...all is over," according to Xinhua. Xinhua went on to say that that Mr. Li's fellow villagers called him "psycho" and his body was found at the center of the explosion and traces of a chemical chlorate used to make fireworks were also discovered in his home. However, angry villagers mocked the official version as an excuse to escape responsibility. One villager said that only a great quantity of explosives, which were stored at the school, could have caused the massive damage to the school building. (LIU Weiming)