China Mine Blast: At least 74 dead and 114 injured

At least 74 miners were killed and 114 injured in a gas explosion that occurred Sunday in northern China, in the heart of the main coal province of the country of mines among the most dangerous in the world.

•     The accident occurred at 02h00 (18h00 GMT Saturday) in Shanxi province, said the state news agency New China, which has published a revised balance of 74 dead.
  
      An unspecified number of minors - at least twenty - were still blocked Sunday afternoon at the bottom of Tunlan Mine, located 50 kilometers from the provincial capital, Taiyuan. Some of them could join their families with mobile phones.
  
      Some 436 miners were working at the bottom of the beam when the gas explosion occurred. More than 300 were unharmed, said China News.
  
      This is the deadliest accident since the one that had killed 105 people in December 2007 after an explosion in a mine in Shanxi.
  
      President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have urged rescue to save any survivors still trapped, according to the official television.
  
      Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang was sent on site to supervise relief operations, said China News. He announced the establishment of a commission of inquiry.
  
      Tunlan Mine, which has an annual production capacity of five million tonnes of coal, is managed by the Shanxi Jiaomei Group. It had not known accidents for a decade.
  
      One of the miners said that he had certainly escaped the worst after having changed his schedule with a colleague. "I should have been among them, had I not changed my hours with another minor. He's still underground. I hope he is alive," he told New China under the guise of anonymity.
  
      Another survivor, Huancheng Xue, 27, said he and his comrades had not been immediately informed of the seriousness of the accident and had been ordered to leave the mine more than one hour after the explosion.
  
      "At this time, electricity was cut in the mine, and miners were forced to the surface on their own," he told New China on his hospital bed. He said having 50 minutes to reach the surface.
  
      Shanxi is the largest coal producing region of China and provides two-thirds of the country's needs, extremely voracious energy.
  
      Most of the injured were poisoned by carbon monoxide, according to New China, citing doctors at a hospital in the town of Gujiao, near the mine site.
  
      One hundred and thirteen children were still under observation at the hospital late in the day and 21 of them are "seriously injured".
  
      The mining is particularly dangerous in China, where many mines have no business license and pay little attention to basic standards of safety.
  
      Nearly 80% of the estimated 16,000 mines in China are illegal, according to official figures.
      The government has initiated several years ago a campaign of controls to close the mines, especially small ones, which do not meet safety standards. But small units, often illegal, open regularly in parallel, distorting the statistics.
  
      About 3,000 miners were killed last year in China, according to official figures which, according to independent monitoring groups, are well below the reality.
      
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.