Twenty-eight miners were killed and five others died during a rescue attempt following a gas explosion that occurred at the Daxian Sankeng Colliery in Nanlou Town, Yuxian, in Yangquan City, Shanxi Province, at around 4.30 PM on 9 December. Seventy-one miners were working underground when the explosion took place, and thick toxic gas still clouded the Daxian Sankeng mine shaft a day after the blast.

The Daxian Sankeng mining disaster came less than two weeks after a colossal mine explosion which caused 166 deaths at the Chenjiashan coalmine in Tungchuan City in neighbouring Shaanxi Province on 28 November – China’s deadliest coalmine disaster in recent years.

Chen Shaoping, an injured miner’s wife from Hubei Province, told CLB that the Daxian Sankeng miners mostly came from Shanxi, Hunan, Hubei and Yunnan Provinces. Miners at only one of the three coalfaces had managed to escape, she said, and some of her relatives who were also miners were still trapped inside the mine, presumed dead.

The miner’s wife, who has a 10-year-old child and has been pregnant for two months, told CLB that miners had to work for 12 hours every day at the mine and only earned monthly wages of 1,200 to 1,500 Yuan.

A doctor at Yuxian Hospital told CLB that six injured miners had been admitted to his ward and that one of them was still unconscious with carbon monoxide poisoning. According to Xinhua news agency, the small licensed mine produces around 150,000 tonnes of coal each year.

On 1 December, speaking during a television programme on provincial coal mine safety, Shanxi Provincial Governor Zhang Baoshun said that 25 people had been killed in two other gas explosions in Shanxi Province – in the Pinglu District of Shuozhou City and the Wanbolin District of Taiyuan City – within a 20-day period in November. Zhang added that the demand for coal and the price of coal had surged since winter began, leading mining companies to push up coal production in pursuit of large profits and at the expense of miners’ physical safety.

Sources: China Labour Bulletin, Xinhua, Reuters, Associated Press