Tragic Explosion at Shanxi’s Liushenyu Coal Mine Claims 90 Lives, Reports State Media

BEIJING — A devastating gas explosion rocked a coal mine in northern Shanxi province, China, claiming at least 90 lives, as reported by state media on Saturday. This incident marks the most lethal mining disaster in the nation in recent years.

The tragedy struck the Liushenyu coal mine in Changzhi city on Friday evening, according to the official news agency Xinhua. At the time of the explosion, approximately 247 miners were working underground.

As of Saturday afternoon, nine miners remained missing, Xinhua revealed, while over 120 individuals were receiving medical treatment in hospitals.

The investigation into the explosion’s cause is ongoing, Xinhua noted, with rescue operations in full swing. Hundreds of rescuers and medical staff have been deployed to the site. State media outlet CCTV reported that many of the injured suffered from exposure to toxic gas.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged for maximum efforts to locate the missing workers, according to Xinhua.

Xi also called for the “proper handling of the aftermath of the accident and urged a thorough investigation into its cause, with accountability pursued in accordance with the law,” the news agency said.

Xinhua later reported that the “persons responsible for the company involved in the mine accident have been placed under control,” citing the local emergency management bureau.

The coal mine, operated by the Shanxi Tongzhou Coal & Coke Group with an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons, was placed on a national list of disaster-prone coal mines by China’s National Mine Safety Administration in 2024 for having “high gas content.”

Shanxi province is known as China’s main coal mining province. With a size larger than Greece and a population of around 34 million, the province’s hundreds of thousands of miners dug 1.3 billion tons of coal last year, or almost a third of China’s total.

In February 2023, 53 people were killed after a collapse at an open-pit mine in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. In November 2009, an explosion at a mine in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province killed 108, according to state media.