Six people were sentenced Saturday to up to six years in prison over China's worst ever industrial accident, a gas leak which killed 243 people in December.
The six were sentenced for "having great responsibility" for the accident, when a burst gas well released a cloud of deadly fumes killing villagers as they slept.
"The sentences were reasonable. This is a warning to the company," said Chuandong (East Sichuan) Drilling Company employee Tang Yan, confirming the sentences as reported by China News Service (CNS).
Wu Bin, head of the drilling team which caused the accident, was sentenced to six years while engineer Wang Jiandong and drilling technician Song Tao each received five years, CNS said.
Wu Hua, deputy manager of the China National Petroleum Company subsidiary, was given four years while two workers were jailed for three years.
The defendants were guilty of not plugging the drill hole properly, causing the gas blow-out, not controlling the leak and not alerting local officials quickly, CNS said.
Many of the victims had little chance to flee the disaster in a mountainous part of the south-western Chongqing municipality as toxic sulphurated hydrogen, smelling of rotten eggs, spread across a 80 square kilometer (32 square mile) area.
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