The local government in Linfen, in north China's coal-rich Shanxi Province, has sacked 35 officials over three mine accidents that killed 32 people in March, sources told Xinhua on Friday.

Greedy, lawless mine owners are not the only ones to blame for the accidents. A lack of supervision and malpractice by officials is also a cause, the sources said.

The local authorities have also expelled two government staff for misconduct.

The punished officials are from county and town-level governments and coal industry, work safety, land resources and police bureaus.

Seven officials in Yaodu district are the latest to be sacked over a coal mine explosion that killed 26 on March 28. The mine's production license had expired.

On March 14, a flooded coal mine in Hongdong county claimed three lives, and two days later in Xiangning county three miners died in another accident.

The March 28 accident is the second major one in four months in Linfen, a city with more than 400 mines. Twenty-four miners were killed in the blast which struck Luweitan colliery in the city on Nov. 27, 2006. The mine's production permit and safety license had both expired before the accident.

Coal mine accidents killed 4,746 people in 2006 and 357 in the first two months of this year, figures from the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) show.

China has set a goal of reducing the death rate to 2.1 for every one million tons of coal produced by 2010, down from 2.81 in 2005. The 2005 mine fatality figure was 70 times worse than the equivalent United States figure and seven times the figures in Russia and India.

Source: Xinhua