Blasts near east China government buildings injure five

BEIJING (Reuters) - Blasts at three sites near government buildings in an eastern Chinese city probably caused by a disgruntled farmer damaged 10 cars and injured at least five people on Thursday, state media reported.

The cause of the near-simultaneous blasts several minutes' drive apart in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, was being investigated, Xinhua news agency said, but it cited a source at the provincial government saying a disgruntled farmer was most likely to blame.

The blasts shook the prosecutor's office, a district-level government office and the district food and drug administration, Xinhua said. Most of the windows in the eight-storey prosecutor's office were shattered after the explosion less than 100 metres away, it added.

Villager Zhang Weizhang also said it was possible a disgruntled local resident was to blame.

"There are plenty of people complaining about the government. They ignore complaints. They've ignored mine," said Zhang, who said he was in a dispute over forestry rights in Fuzhou's Linchuan district.

"But nobody ordinary would do something like this. This isn't normal for here."

The Fuzhou government did not answer calls seeking comment.

Fuzhou's Communist Party boss, Gan Liangmiao, told officials in October that they must "firmly establish the idea that stability comes before all else and stability comes higher than anything else," the Fuzhou Daily said at the time.

This Fuzhou is not the same city as the provincial capital of the neighbouring province of Fujian, which is spelled the same in English but written with different Chinese characters.

Jiangxi province is home to many mines, which use explosives, and fireworks manufacturers. In past years, disgruntled or mentally unstable Chinese citizens have set off explosions near buildings or on buses.

Such "sudden incidents," as China refers to them, underscore broader government worries about stability in the world's second-largest economy, with a widening gap between rich and poor and growing anger at corruption and environmental issues.

Earlier this month, a petrol bomb set off by a disgruntled former employee at a rural bank in a heavily Tibetan region of northwestern China's Gansu province wounded 49 people.

In 2001, a string of explosions at workers' dormitories in the northern city of Shijiazhuang killed 108 people.

Chinese farmers have been at the centre of many incidents of unrest and protest, with anger frequently focussed on land grabs to make way for infrastructure projects or commercial buildings.

Last year, three people set themselves on fire in a Jiangxi county not far from Fuzhou to try to stop officials forcing them

out of their homes to make way for a bus station.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Chris Buckley; Editing by Nick Macfie)