At least 203 miners died and 13 more were trapped underground after a huge gas explosion at a coal mine in northeastern China, state media said Tuesday. Another 22 miners were injured in the explosion Monday afternoon at the Sunjiawan mine in Fuxin city, Liaoning province, the official Xinhua news agency said, in China's worst mining accident in more than 40 years. The agency quoted mine official Zhang Yunfu as saying that a "mining tremor" measuring 2.5 on the Richter scale was felt at the 10 minutes before the explosion. The tremor apparently released gas into the mine shaft. Some 180 rescue workers were searching for the missing miners near the site of the blast, which occurred 242 metres below the surface at about 3 p.m. Monday. One of the inured miners was in a coma, after suffering a serious head injury when the shock wave from the explosion threw him against a metal or stone object, Zhang said. Doctors at a hospital in Fuxin said the other 21 injured miners were out of danger, he said. Local officials said 574 people were working at the mine on Monday morning, but 330 miners came to the surface at 2 p.m., leaving 244 underground at the time of the explosion. China News Service said 28 miners survived the blast, including the 22 who were injured. The state-run Sunjiawan mine employs 3,100 people and has a designed annual production capacity of 1.5 million tons of coal. More than 8,000 workers die annually in Chinese mines. Many accidents at small or illegal mines are not even reported. Last November, 166 people died at a coal mine in the northern province of Shaanxi. --SP 1205 Local Time 0905 GMT
