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14 November, 2005
A deadly past several weeks has brought more deaths from China’s mines.
On 11 November, 19 perished due to a gas explosion at Bayinsai Coal Tar Co. in Wuhai city, Inner Mongolia. That was preceded by two separate gas blasts on 6 November, claiming a total of 52 miners. At the one in Xingtai County, Hebei province, three gypsum mines collapsed killing 36 and seriously injuring another 30. The other happened at the Taiping Coal Mine, Shanxi province, where 16 died in a gas blast.
On 8 November in Qitai County in the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur, 14 died in a workers dormitory where an employee of Beitahsan Coal Mine was handling explosives. Sixteen coal miners died on 27 October due to an explosion inside the Zhongxing Coal Mine near Aksu city in northwest Xinjiang region.
Drilling through a water-eroded cave brought death by drowning to 28 miners on 4 October at Guang’an Energy Group’s Longtan Coal Mine in Sichuan province. A day earlier in Henan province, 34 miners died from a gas explosion at the Henan Hebei Coal Co., a joint venture between the state and Thai-based Banpu plc. And on the evening of 2 October, ten people died when they were overcome by gas after sneaking into a molybdenum mine in Liaoning province to work illegally.
China’s State Administration of Coal Mine Safety will have closed 7,000 mines due to safety concerns by the end of the year, and another Chinese agency posted on its website that in order to qualify for financial incentives available for safe mining practices, managers must accompany workers into mines on each shift.