At least eight people were killed and 38 remain trapped after a gas explosion Friday evening at the Liushenyu coal mine in Changzhi city, in China’s northern Shanxi province, state media reported Saturday.
According to Xinhua, 247 workers were underground when the blast occurred. As of early Saturday, 201 had been rescued and brought to the surface. The cause of the explosion is under investigation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an all-out effort to rescue the missing and an investigation of the accident’s cause while holding those responsible accountable, according to Xinhua.
Shanxi province is known as China’s main coal mining province. With a size larger than Greece and a population of around 34 million, the province’s hundreds of thousands of miners dug 1.3 billion tons (1.17 billion metric tons) of coal last year, or almost a third of China’s total.
