At least 90 people have died and about a dozen more remain trapped underground after an accident that occurred this Friday due to an explosion at the Liushenyu coal mine, located in Qinyuan county, Shanxi province, in northern China, according to local authorities. More than 250 workers were inside the mine, in what is the most serious incident for mining in the country since 2009.
The official Chinese news agency
Carbon monoxide levels exceeded limits
At the time of the incident, around 7:29 p.m. (local time) this Friday, the levels of carbon monoxide inside the mine “far exceeded the limits permitted in a coal mine in the city,” according to the first evaluations of what happened. An official of the mine operator, the Shanxi Tongzhou Group, is already in the custody of the authorities to undergo questioning.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has given “important instructions” to the teams deployed on the ground, urging them to do “everything possible” to find and rescue people who remain missing, as well as to care for all the injured.
“Every effort must be made to care for the injured, scientifically organize search and rescue operations, and properly manage the consequences,” according to the statement sent by the General Secretariat of the Communist Party of China in relation to what has become the most serious accident since the 2009 explosion in the Heilongjiang mine, in the extreme north of the country, which left 108 dead.
The Chinese authorities have arrested those responsible for the company involved, according to the newspaper ‘China Daily’, although at the moment no further details have been released about the possible cause of the accident or its circumstances.
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