Boy, 12, has chunk of flesh blown from his FACE after his mobile phone explodes while charging 

A 12-year-old in central China was seriously injured when his phone exploded while it was charging.

The boy, known only as Hanghang, was using the old handset as an alarm when he woke up early for school and started to play with it.

He said the phone felt hot and then blew up in his face, exposing part of his jawbone and embedding fragments in his arms and legs. 

'I played with the phone for a few minutes,' he said.

'The phone felt hot then it suddenly exploded and all I could see were my hands covered in blood and blood dripping from my face.

'I used a towel to stem the blood and washed my hands under the tap then I called the ambulance.' 

Hanghang, from Pingdingshan City, in the Henan province, told reporters at People's Daily Online that when the explosion happened he didn't dare tell his parents and called the ambulance service himself following the accident last week.

He is now being treated in Ping Mei Group Hospital and is expected to need several operations to repair the damage.

Doctors said he had 4cm injury to his face which exposed part of his lower jawbone as well as trauma to his left hand as well as lower legs and knees.

He underwent emergency surgery before he was sent to the burns unit and onto the plastic surgery inpatient department.

Hanghang said he could not be sure of the type of phone as it was one of several old phones.

He said: 'It was the battery that exploded. I have heard my classmates talk about this happening but I never thought it would happen to me.'