Ninety six miners are feared dead following a coal mine gas
blast early Thursday morning in north China's Shanxi Province,
local safety authorities said.
By 3 PM, 15 workers were rescued or had managed to escape on
their own, said sources with the coal mine safety bureau in Linfen,
a resource-rich city 400 kilometers south of Taiyuan, the
provincial capital.
Authorities disagreed on the exact time of the accident and the
number of miners trapped in the village-run Xinyao pit, located in
Hongtong County of Linfen.
A press release published on the State Administration of Coal
Mine Safety website at midday reported 40 dead with 13 survivors
and 74 unaccounted for.
The coal mine safety bureau in Linfen, however, would not
confirm the figures in a phone interview with Xinhua. It put the
death toll at 46 at midday, and suggested the number of workers in
the pit totaled about 111.
The bureau had sent 13 rescue teams to the site.
Xinyao pit, owned by Ruizhiyuan Mining Co., is fully licensed
and designed to produce 210,000 tons of coal annually.
Investigators suspected the accident was caused by illegal
mining activities in an unauthorized part of the mine.
(Xinhua News Agency, December 6, 2007)