Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji on March 8 blamed a lone madman for the deadly school blast in East China's Jiangxi Province and denied children were making fireworks on the premises.

Zhu told Hong Kong reporters during a meeting in Beijing that initial investigations showed Tuesday's blast in the village of Fanglin was caused by a "man who has a grudge and mental illness," Cable Television and RTHK said.

Zhu went on to deny reports in the Chinese official press and testimony from villagers that the school in Jiangxi Province was being used to manufacture firecrackers.

Zhu said the man acted alone by bringing firework powder into a school room on the ground floor and setting it alight, killing 41 people including himself, said Cable Television.

A local doctor who treated the injured told reporters that children were putting fuses into fire-crackers at the time of the blast, a report confirmed by the official Yangcheng Evening News.

China says 41 people, mostly young children, died in the explosion.

The premier's comments followed a report Thursday in the Liaoshen Evening News, an official paper from northeast China, which also blamed a mysterious man in black.

The paper said it interviewed a teacher named Deng, who was hospitalized after the blast in the Wanzai County hospital, Jiangxi province.

"At the time we were about 20 minutes into the second class, when I saw outside the classroom a 35 or 36-year-old man carrying a sack. I immediately left the lecture podium and told him not to enter the classroom," Deng was quoted as saying.

"But much to my surprise he entered the classroom and put the sack that he was carrying in a corner of the classroom wall.

"Then he suddenly took out a lighter and lit a fuse. I yelled at the students to get out quickly then there was a loud explosion and from then I don't remember anything," he said.

Deng said he had never seen the man before.