Thirteen people have been confirmed dead and seven injured after
a gas explosion in a coal mine in southwest China's Sichuan
Province early Friday.
The injured were all out of danger, Lin Shucheng, head of the
provincial work safety supervision administration, told Xinhua.
The blast happened at 3:11 AM. at the Furong Coal Mine in the
city of Yibin when 20 miners were working underground.
Rescuers had recovered the bodies of the dead as of 2 PM on
Friday, said Lin, who was supervising the rescue operation.
The cause of the accident is under investigation, he said.
As a major coal producer of the province, the state-owned mine
in Gongxian County has an annual production capacity of 1.2 million
tons.
The mine reported a gas explosion in December 2001, which left
nine dead and four injured.
One day earlier in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, nine
miners were trapped underground in a coal mine blast, provincial
colliery work safety authorities confirmed on Thursday.
Zhao Deshuang, a manager of the coal mine who went down into the
mine tunnels to check the situation of the miners after the gas
blast, was also missing, the rescue headquarters for the gas blast
said on Friday.
The gas blast has also caused flooding in the mine, which
hampered the rescue operation, said an official with rescue
headquarters who declined to give his name.
The accident happened at around 5 AM Thursday in the Baoxing
Coal Mine in Fangzheng County, when 28 miners was carrying out
routine tunnel maintaining work. Nineteen escaped while nine others
were missing.
Liu Haisheng, vice governor of Heilongjiang, rushed to the site
to supervise the rescue operation.
Cause of the accident is being investigated.
(Xinhua News Agency October 6, 2006)