37 killed in 3 coal mine blasts
By Jiang Zhuqing (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-03-14 05:40

Thirty-seven miners were killed in three coal mine gas explosions in the past two days, Xinhua and the national safety watchdog said yesterday.

Two blasts occurred yesterday, one in Rongsheng Coal Mine of North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the other in Taihe Mine in Qitaihe of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

The Inner Mongolia accident occurred at 4 am yesterday when 34 workers were underground, said the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) on its website.

Twelve miners have been pulled to safety, said an official with the Inner Mongolia Regional Bureau of Coal Mine Safety.

But 17 miners were confirmed dead, and five were still missing, Xinhua reported last night.

Wang Shuhe, vice-director of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, and local work officials have rushed to the site to supervise rescue work, sources said.

The township coalmine, with an annual production of 30,000 tons, was undergoing a technology upgrade, SAWS said, adding that it did not have a work safety certificate when the accident took place.

The Qitaihe blast occurred at 12:40 pm when 16 miners were working underground. Nine were killed and 7 rescued.

In an earlier accident on Sunday in Central China, all 11 workers were killed after being trapped underground by an explosion that caused a cave-in at Gaoping Colliery in Hunan's Yongxing County, said a source from the provincial coal mine work safety bureau.

Due to the high density of gas underground, rescuers could not enter the mine to search for the trapped, reports said.

Gaoping Colliery, with an annual production capacity of 20,000 tons, is a county-owned coal mine, according to SAWS.

(China Daily 03/14/2006 page1)