Coal mine gas explosion in China kills 90 people, state media say

BEIJING — A gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s northern province of Shanxi killed at least 90 people, state media reported Saturday.

China’s official news agency Xinhua said the accident at Changzhi city’s Liushenyu coal mine happened on Friday evening. Around 247 workers were on duty at the time.

Nine miners were still unaccounted for as of Saturday afternoon, Xinhua said, and more than 120 people were hospitalized.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an all-out effort to rescue the missing and an investigation of the accident’s cause, according to Xinhua.

The cause of the explosion, which occurred Friday evening local time, was under investigation, the agency added. The person in charge of the company involved in the explosion has been taken into custody.

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China has dispatched six national rescue teams following the explosion, totaling 345 personnel.

Shanxi province is known as China’s main coal mining province. With a size larger than Greece and a population of around 34 million, the province’s hundreds of thousands of miners dug 1.3 billion tons of coal last year, or almost a third of China’s total.

In February 2023, 53 people were killed after a collapse at an open-pit mine in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. In November 2009, an explosion at a mine in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province killed 108, according to state media.