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The number of workers killed by a gas explosion at a mine in northeastern China has risen to more than 100.
The official Xinhua news agency said at the time of the pre-dawn blast at the Xinxing mine in Heilongjiang province on Saturday, there were 528 workers in the colliery, and 420 of them had been rescued by Sunday night.
The authorities said 104 were dead and four more were still missing or unaccounted for, believed to be trapped about 500 meters underground.
Some 300 rescue workers were working round-the-clock in search of the missing men but Chinese media said dense gas and collapsed tunnels made the effort slow-going.
There were reports quoting an unnamed employee as saying that the mine's director, deputy director and chief engineer had been fired after the incident.
But Zhang Jinguang, a spokesman for the mining company, told reporters it was an act of nature, and not caused by human error.
"There was no sign that this accident might happen. If there had been, we could have controlled it. On top of that, as I just said, it was a huge and sudden coal and gas explosion like a bomb," he said.
Still, Saturday's incident at the nearly 100-year-old mine near the Russian border once again highlighted how heavy demand for power-generating coal in the world's third-largest economy has sometimes come at a high human cost.
Li Zhanshu, the provincial governor, urged officials to better manage coal mines.
"Development is important, but the growth of GDP shouldn't be achieved at the price of miners' blood," he said.
The deadliest accident in China's mining industry in two years was a blow to the central government's efforts to improve safety in the world's deadliest mine industry.
Hundreds of smaller, private mines have been shut down or absorbed into state-owned operations.
Compared to other manual jobs, Chinese coal miners can earn relatively high wages, tempting workers and farmers into rickety and poorly-ventilated shafts.
In the first half of the year, 1,175 people died in officially recorded coal mine accidents across China, a fall of 18.4 per cent compared to the same time last year, according to the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety.
PHOTO CAPTION
Rescue workers enter a mine shaft after an explosion tore through the state-run coal mine in northeast China's Heilongjiang province, near the Russian border.
Al-Jazeera
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