Sixteen people have died in a gas explosion at a coal mine in China's northwestern Heilongjiang province.
A total of 97 miners were working at the time of the blast yesterday in the Li Shu coalmine in Jixi city, Xinhua news agency said. All the other miners were rescued.
More than 140,000 died in China last year in workplace accidents, according to China's work safety bureau.
In the especially dangerous coal-mining industry, 4,498 miners died in the first nine months of 2002, bureau officials have said.
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According to foreign experts about 10,000 miners - most coal miners - die in China each year.
AFP