Tragic Coal Mine Explosion in Shanxi, China Claims 90 Lives: Inside the Liushenyu Disaster

A tragic gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s Shanxi province has resulted in the deaths of at least 90 individuals, marking it as the most fatal mining incident in the country in recent years, according to state media reports on Saturday.

The incident occurred at the Liushenyu coal mine located in Changzhi city on Friday evening, as reported by the official Xinhua news agency. At the time of the explosion, approximately 247 miners were working underground.

As of Saturday afternoon, nine miners remain missing, and over 120 individuals have been hospitalized, Xinhua noted in their report.

The precise cause of the explosion is still being investigated. Meanwhile, rescue operations are ongoing, with hundreds of rescuers and medical teams deployed to the scene. Many of those injured have suffered from exposure to toxic gases, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

In response to the disaster, Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged for a full-scale effort to locate the missing miners, as reported by Xinhua.

President Xi has also emphasized the need for a thorough investigation into the cause of the explosion and called for those responsible to be held accountable in accordance with the law, the news agency stated.

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.