This is the shocking moment a gas cooker exploded as a recently-widowed grandmother tried to turn it on in her kitchen in China.

The elderly woman, 82, was trying to switch on the stove to cook dinner when it suddenly blasted in front of her in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, on October 12.

CCTV footage shows the cabinets below the stove being blown open by the force of the explosion, which pushed the pensioner, who lives alone, away from the kitchen counter.

She then tried to push the upper cabinet to douse the fire, but the flames spread onto the counter.

The visibly frantic woman attempted to extinguish the fire using a pan but was unsuccessful. Moments later, she turned off the gas cylinder, causing the fire to go out.

Exhausted, she sat on a chair and began to cry in front of a photograph of her deceased husband.

The widower's grandson, Mr Wang, said: 'I still have lingering fears watching the surveillance footage. My grandfather has been dead for two and a half years, and my grandmother has lived alone since then.

'She went from an old princess who did not have to do anything to an old woman who has to do everything herself.

'The gas pipe fell off and exploded, but fortunately, she was not injured. Seeing my grandmother crying at the end of the hall in front of my grandfather's portrait was really heartbreaking for me as her grandnephew.'

Authorities said the cause of the accident was a gas leak caused by the detachment of the liquefied gas pipe.