At least 90 people were killed and hundreds more injured after a gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s northern province of Shanxi, state-controlled media said on May 23.
The blast happened Friday evening at the Liushenyu coal mine in Qinyuan County while about 247 workers were working underground, according to state-controlled media.
Local authorities initially reported eight fatalities and 38 workers still trapped underground, while 201 workers had been brought to safety. Officials now say the death toll has jumped to 90, with more than 120 people injured.
It’s the country’s worst mine disaster in over 16 years.
State-controlled media said that a person in charge of the mining company had been taken into custody.
The mine is operated by Shanxi Tongzhou Group Liushenyu Coal Industry, which was established in 2010 and is controlled by Shanxi Tongzhou Coal Coking Group, according to corporate database Qichacha.
It was placed on a national list of disaster-prone coal mines by China’s National Mine Safety Administration in 2024 for having “high gas content.”
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 (1.17 billion metric tons) of coal last year, or almost a third of China’s total.
In October 2021, Beijing’s Mine Safety Supervision Bureau found that coal mines in Shanxi faced a number of serious safety issues, including inadequate safety protocols for emergency situations such as gas leaks and a lack of supervision of workers.
Li also alleged that unsafe mines were still able to get permission to restart operations because local governments pursue tax revenues, and there is collusion between the government and business entities.