Eight miners were killed in a colliery gas blast in northwest China's Gansu Province on Tuesday, the local safety watchdog said.
The accident was reported at 12:10 a.m. in a pit of Shuimogou mine in Sunan county, in the city of Zhangye, said Wang Zhengyuan, deputy head of the provincial bureau of coal mine safety.
He said 19 miners were working in the pit and 11 escaped.
Among the dead were seven men from Gansu's Wuwei city and one from Hubei Province in central China. All the bodies have been retrieved.
The entrance to the mine was locked on Wednesday and two policemen were standing guard. An investigation has been launched.
At the miners' residential area about 200 meters from the pit, Li Chengyuan, a 20-something peasant from Yongdeng County, squatted on the ground and smoked a cigarette.
"I was only hired on Monday and was due to start work on Tuesday," he said. "When I got there at 6:00 a.m. I saw only ambulances and police cars."
Shuimogou mine is owned by the state-run Jiutiaoling Mining Co.Ltd., the province's only producer of blind coal. The state company, founded in 1954, has a designed annual production capacity of 300,000 tons. It currently employs 2,700 miners but is applying for bankruptcy as resources in the region have been exhausted.
Source: Xinhua
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