Chinese authorities held the manager of a fast food restaurant for questioning today as they investigated a food poisoning outbreak that state media said had killed 41 people and put hundreds more in hospital.
Locals in Tangshan, a small industrial town near the eastern city of Nanjing, estimated that more than 100 people had died after eating breakfast snacks including sesame cakes and fried dough sticks at a branch of the Heshengyuan Soy Milk chain.
The Communist Party's Central Committee and the cabinet sent a team of police and health officials to investigate the case, state media said, highlighting concerns in Beijing about bad publicity in the sensitive run-up to a leadership change.
Peng Yongqing, who owns a store next to the tiny Heshengyuan outlet - now closed - on the main thoroughfare through Tangshan, said he saw one elderly man collapse after eating breakfast there yesterday.
"It happened right there in front of my store," he told Reuters. "One minute he was sitting there eating and the next he stood up and keeled over. We all thought he was choking, we had no idea what was wrong."
The man died on the way to hospital, said Peng.
As a motorcade carrying plainclothes and uniformed police sped around the normally quiet town of a few thousand people, rumors about the poisoning swirled, with some saying they suspected foul play.
Others said they saw victims bleeding at the mouth and ears.