A gas explosion killed at least 22 miners and injured 37 yesterday morning at a coal mine in Fuxin city of northeast China's Liaoning Province.

Four miners were missing, said Zhang Wanqin, head of the Publicity Department of the Fuxin Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China.

The explosion site is about 1,000 metres below ground, according to coal mine sources.

The blast occurred at 8:15 AM in Wulong Coal Mine of Fuxin Mining Industrial Group, about 150 kilometres northwest of Shenyang, the provincial capital.

The mine, which has been in operation since 1957, produces more than 2 million tons of coal a year.

Liaoning provincial government and Fuxin city government officials have rushed to the site to oversee rescue work.

About 180 rescuers are working round the clock to try to find any survivors.

The cause of the accident in being investigated.

55 bodies recovered

Rescuers in north China's Shanxi Province have recovered 55 bodies trapped in a flooded colliery for more than a month, the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) said on Tuesday. One is still missing.

The flooding occurred on May 18 in Zuoyun and 266 miners were working when the accident occurred, of which 210 escaped, reports said.

SAWS' statistics show that 5,938 people were killed in 3,341 coal-mine related accidents last year.

To prevent recurrence of such accidents, the government shut down 5,931 small mines in the first four months of this year, SAWS officials said, and the target is to shut down all potentially unsafe small coal mines by 2008.

Li Yizhong, head of SAWS, said last week that China would close 7,000 more small coal mines to bring their total number below 10,000 before 2008.

(China Daily June 29, 2006)