China, 90 dead in mine. The worst disaster for 17 years
At the time of the explosion, there were 247 workers in the coal mine
The death toll in the gas explosion at a coal mine in northern China has risen to over 90, according to Chinese state media reports. It is the biggest mining disaster in the country in 17 years. At the time of the explosion, there were 247 workers in the coal mine in Liushenyu, Shanxi province, according to the Xinhua news agency. Most of them were brought to the surface. A total of 345 rescuers were on the scene, who had previously searched "intensively" for nine people still missing, the news agency added. In 2009, 108 people lost their lives in a mine explosion in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang.
According to local authorities, quoted by Xinhua, nine other people are missing. The managers of the company involved have been detained by security forces, according to the headquarters of the rescue operation
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the authorities to "spare no effort" to treat the injured and conduct search and rescue operations, while ordering a thorough investigation into the causes of the accident and a strict accountability investigation in accordance with the law, Xinhua reported.
Shanxi Province is known as China's leading coal mining province. With an area larger than Greece and a population of around 34 million, the province's hundreds of thousands of miners extracted 1.3 billion tonnes of coal last year, or almost a third of China's total.
