At least 90 killed in China coal mine gas explosion

Official news agency Xinhua said the accident in Changzhi city’s Liushenyu coal mine occurred on Friday evening. There were approximately 247 workers employed at the time.

The agency initially reported early Saturday that eight people had been killed and 38 people were trapped underground. Nine were still in custody as of Saturday afternoon, Xinhua said.

The cause of the explosion was under investigation, Xinhua reported, and rescue efforts continued. Among the injured, many were injured by poisonous gas, state media CCTV said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an all-out effort to rescue the missing and an investigation into the cause of the accident while holding those responsible to account, Xinhua reported.

Shanxi province is known as the most important mining province in China.

With a size larger than Greece and a population of about 34 million, the province’s hundreds of thousands of miners mined 1.17 billion tons of coal last year, almost a third of China’s total.