9 dead, 7 trapped in central China coal mine after gas accident

9 dead, 7 trapped in central China coal mine

BEIJING — Nine workers were killed and seven others trapped after lethal gas leaked into a coal mine in central China, a state news agency said Tuesday.

A “gas outburst” occurred at 11:19 p.m. Monday at the Sanyuandong Coal Mine in Dengfeng, a city in Henan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It reported 127 miners were underground and 111 escaped unharmed, according to an official with the Zhengzhou Coal Industry Co. Ltd., which runs the mine. The company could not be reached by phone.

Calls to the coal management bureau and the propaganda office of the Communist Party in the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, which oversees Dengfeng, rang unanswered.

Over the weekend, 24 workers were trapped in a flooded mine in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, while a blast at a workers’ dormitory at another mine in the northern city of Linfen in Shanxi province killed at least 17 people.

China’s mining industry is the world’s deadliest with accidents killing more than 2,600 miners throughout the country last year.