At least 25 miners were killed following a major gas explosion at the Chenjiashan Coal Mine in Shaanxi Province at 7:20 AM Sunday. Another 141 remained trapped underground, said rescuers at the site early Monday.

Forty-five of the 127 miners who escaped or were rescued were injured, according to the local government, mostly from carbon monoxide poisoning, burns and abrasions. Eleven were listed as seriously injured and all 45 have been hospitalized.

There were 293 miners working underground when the explosion occurred at a pit about 8,000 meters from the mine entrance. Most of those who escaped were near the entrance.

One rescued worker said even though he was at a site approximately 1,500 meters underground, he was knocked down by the force of the blast.

Rescuers have been unable to approach the site of the explosion owing to high concentrations of carbon monoxide in the air. The priority task is to restore ventilation, as the system was severely damaged in the blast, said Zhao Tiechui, deputy head of the State Production Safety Bureau. Zhao arrived in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi, on Sunday.

Six rescue teams have been working to reach the trapped miners and others are being called from surrounding areas to assist. The provincial government has ordered all mines with high gas concentrations to halt operations pending safety inspections.

The Beijing News reported that the mother of one miner said in an interview that her son, a member of the mine's fire control team, told her on November 27 that they had been fighting small fires in the pits for nearly a week. Many of the miners had wanted to stop working until the problem was solved, the unidentified woman said, but the company reportedly refused to suspend operations.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have ordered local officials to do everything possible to locate the missing, care for the injured and handle the aftermath.

Leading provincial officials, including Li Jianguo, secretary of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and Chen Deming, acting governor of Shaanxi, are at the site of the accident to monitor operations.

The Chenjiashan mine is a state-owned venture under the jurisdiction of the Tongchuan Mining Administration, capable of producing 2.3 million tons of coal a year. A gas explosion killed 38 in the same mine in April 2001.

Gas leaks are a geological hazard associated with pit mining. A sudden burst can bring the density of gas in the mine above 12 percent within seconds, creating conditions for an explosion.

This is the second gas disaster causing a heavy death toll in a state-owned coal mine in the past 40 days. An explosion at the Daping Coal Mine in Henan Province on October 20 killed 148 and injured 32.

Meanwhile, 16 officials in Handan County, north China's Hebei Province, have been remanded for prosecution for abuse of power in helping conceal the number of deaths in a major coal mine gas explosion on June 3. Fourteen miners were killed in that accident and another 23 injured.

The owner, fearing that that the mine would be shut down, allegedly collaborated with local officials to cover up the actual number of casualties, telling the central government investigation team that only one person was killed.

Local media reports revealing the cover-up led the government to restart its investigation and the police were called in.

In 2003, the average output per miner in China was 321 tons of coal, only 2.2 percent of the United States figure and 8.1 percent of South Africa's. The death rate for every 100 tons of coal, however, was 100 times that of the US and 30 times that of South Africa.

(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn November 29, 2004)