Thirteen people have been confirmed dead and seven injured after a gas explosion in a coal mine in southwest China's Sichuan Province early Friday.

The injured were all out of danger, Lin Shucheng, head of the provincial work safety supervision administration, told Xinhua.

The blast happened at 3:11 AM. at the Furong Coal Mine in the city of Yibin when 20 miners were working underground.

Rescuers had recovered the bodies of the dead as of 2 PM on Friday, said Lin, who was supervising the rescue operation.

The cause of the accident is under investigation, he said.

As a major coal producer of the province, the state-owned mine in Gongxian County has an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons.

The mine reported a gas explosion in December 2001, which left nine dead and four injured.

One day earlier in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, nine miners were trapped underground in a coal mine blast, provincial colliery work safety authorities confirmed on Thursday.

Zhao Deshuang, a manager of the coal mine who went down into the mine tunnels to check the situation of the miners after the gas blast, was also missing, the rescue headquarters for the gas blast said on Friday.

The gas blast has also caused flooding in the mine, which hampered the rescue operation, said an official with rescue headquarters who declined to give his name.

The accident happened at around 5 AM Thursday in the Baoxing Coal Mine in Fangzheng County, when 28 miners was carrying out routine tunnel maintaining work. Nineteen escaped while nine others were missing.

Liu Haisheng, vice governor of Heilongjiang, rushed to the site to supervise the rescue operation.

Cause of the accident is being investigated.

(Xinhua News Agency October 6, 2006)