The death toll from China’s worst mine disaster in 17 years has been revised downwards to 82, local officials said.
There was chaos and confusion at the scene in the northern province of Shanxi late on Friday, with initial reports from state media suggesting 90 people had died in the gas explosion at the Liushenyu coal mine.
Even at the reduced number, the incident remains China’s deadliest mining incident since 2009, when a gas explosion at the Xinxing Mine in Heilongjiang province killed 108 people.
Local officials said at the press conference the initial death toll from state media had been tallied in error.
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“After the incident the scene was chaotic, the company’s count of the number of workers was not clear, which led to the initial inaccurate number,” said Guo Xiaofang, the head of Shanxi’s Qinyuan county, where the mine is located.
There were 247 workers on duty underground at the time of the explosion.
Two people remained unaccounted for, Guo said, while 128 were injured and required hospital treatment. Thirty-five others were uninjured.
The Liushenyu mine is owned by Shanxi Tongzhou Coal Coking Group and all four of its mines have been closed and company executives detained, local officials said at the news conference.
State-run newspaper the People’s Daily published an editorial on the explosion on its front page on Sunday morning, which called for greater attention to safety in production and to “completely reverse the tendency to prioritise development over safety”.
President Xi Jinping on Saturday had called for authorities to “spare no effort” in treating the injured and conducting search and rescue operations. He also ordered an investigation into the incident.
The mine has a production capacity of 1.2 million tons of coal per year, officials said at the press conference.
China last year mined 4.83 billion tons of the fuel, which forms the backbone of its power sector. – Reuters
