A gas explosion at a coal mine in China's northern Shanxi province killed at least 90 people Friday evening, state media reported Saturday, making it the country's deadliest mining disaster in more than 15 years.
The accident happened at the Liushenyu coal mine in Changzhi city. Around 247 workers were on duty at the time of the blast. As of Saturday afternoon, nine miners were still unaccounted for and more than 120 people were hospitalized, according to official news agency Xinhua. Many of the injured suffered from toxic gas exposure.
One hospitalized miner, Wang Yong, described the moments after the explosion in a video interview with state broadcaster CCTV. He said he smelled sulfur "like firecrackers" and saw smoke. "I told people to run," he said. "As I ran, I saw people being choked by the smoke. And then I blacked out."
The cause of the explosion is under investigation. Hundreds of rescuers and medical personnel have been sent to the site. Rescue efforts were complicated by the fact that blueprints provided by the coal mine did not match the actual layout of the facility, state media reported.
President Xi Jinping called for an all-out effort to rescue the missing and urged the "proper handling of the aftermath of the accident and a thorough investigation into its cause, with accountability pursued in accordance with the law," Xinhua reported. Separately, the local emergency management bureau said the "persons responsible for the company involved in the mine accident have been placed under control," according to Xinhua.
The Liushenyu mine is operated by the Shanxi Tongzhou Coal and Coke Group and has an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons. China's National Mine Safety Administration placed it on a national list of disaster-prone mines in 2024 for having "high gas content."
Shanxi is China's main coal mining province. Its hundreds of thousands of miners dug 1.3 billion tons of coal last year, nearly a third of China's total output. The province is larger than Greece and has a population of around 34 million.
The last comparable disaster in China came in November 2009, when an explosion at a mine in Heilongjiang province killed 108 people. In February 2023, 53 people died after a collapse at an open-pit mine in Inner Mongolia.
