The death toll from a gas explosion in a coal mine in north China's Shanxi Province had risen to 50 by Monday morning, with 22 still missing.

Sources with the provincial government said 87 miners were working underground in the Mengnanzhuang coal mine in Xiaoyi City early Saturday afternoon when the blast occurred.

Fifteen people so far have managed to survive the disaster, ands even teams of rescue workers have been sent to the site to search for more survivors. One miner was rescued on Sunday afternoon.

Ventilation has been restored in the mine but searching is still tough due to much of it having caved in, said a source from the rescue team.

Tian Chengping, secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Governor Liu Zhenhua rushed to the scene to direct the rescue work on Saturday evening.

Wang Xianzheng, director of the State Administration of Production Safety, Chen Changzhi, vice minister of Supervision, and Ji Mingbo, member of the Secretariat of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, arrived at the site Sunday afternoon to oversee the rescue and investigation work.

The Shanxi provincial government has ordered all coal mines to stop operation starting from Sunday, as this was the third gas explosion in this area with a death toll higher than 10 since February.

(Xinhua News Agency March 24, 2003)