China mine accident kills more than 200

BEIJING - A gas explosion in a coal mine in China's northeastern province of Liaoning has killed as many as 203 miners in the worst disaster to hit the country's disaster-plagued mining industry in at least 15 years.

The explosion, which occurred on Monday afternoon at the mine in Fuxin city, injured 22 and trapped 13, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.

The blast occurred 242m below ground at about 3pm (8pm NZT) on Monday at the Sujiawan colliery of the Fuxin coal industry group, it said, citing the Liaoning Coalmine Safety Supervision Bureau.

China's mining industry is the world's biggest and its most deadly.

The latest blast that killed at least 203 miners was the deadliest since 166 miners were killed in a gas explosion in northern Henan province last November.

China's coal mines, which provide the main fuel for the world's seventh-biggest economy, have an appalling safety record underscored by a series of major accidents last year, several within days of each other at the end of the year.

Last year, at least 5,000 people were killed in mining accidents.

China's leaders, including Premier Wen Jiabao, have pledged more high-level attention to work safety.

China last year produced 35 per cent of the world's coal but reported 80 per cent of global deaths in colliery accidents at a rate of three fatalities per million tonnes of coal.

The average Chinese miner produced 321 tonnes of coal -- just 2.2 per cent of what a miner in the more mechanised United States produced and 8.1 per cent of what a miner in South Africa produced.

But the death rate in Chinese mines is 100 times that of US mines and 30 times that of South African mines, official media have reported.

The government has struggled to regulate thousands of small mines, but a chronic energy shortage and the lure of profits has led many mine operators to ignore orders to close dangerous pits.

- REUTERS