China has punished officials responsible for the Songhua River spill that cut off drinking water in Harbin for days, one of the country's worst environmental disasters, Xinhua news agency said on Friday. An explosion last November at a PetroChina plant in northeastern Jilin province poured 100 tonnes of toxic benzene compounds into the Songhua, leaving millions of people in the downstream city of Harbin without drinking water for nearly a week... Duan Wende, vice president of PetroChina and its parent company, the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), received an "administrative demerit" for the state-owned firm's negligence... Nine others, including Yu Li, general manager of the Jilin Petrochemical Company...were either sacked, demoted or received demerits and warnings, Xinhua said without elaborating.