Gas blast in north China coal mine kills 23

BEIJING, Thursday (Reuters) - A gas explosion at a Chinese coal mine has killed at least 23 miners, state media reported on Thursday, in the latest accident to hit the world's deadliest mining industry.

Another 53 people were hospitalised after breathing toxic gases from the blast at the Sihe Coal Mine in the northern province of Shanxi, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Nearly 700 miners were working underground at the time of the explosion on Wednesday, the report said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial coal mine safety supervision bureau. Search and rescue work ended early on Thursday.

The government has been trying to clean up China's mining industry, which killed more than 5,500 in the country in 2005, but a spate of accidents has made a mockery of safety campaigns.

Booming demand and high prices for coal, which accounts for about 70 percent of China's energy, mean regulations are often ignored, production is pushed beyond safe limits and mines that have been shut down reopened illegally.

The central government says local officials, who have turned to mines as a source of revenue, are sabotaging the campaign to close unsafe mines.

China produces about one-third of the world's coal but accounted for more than 80 percent of global coal mine deaths in 2004 and the death rate at its mines is 100 times that for pits in the United States.

Shanxi, where Wednesday's blast happened, is China's leading coal producing province, and has shut about a quarter of 1,200 mines targeted to be closed because they lacked proper safety measures, according to a report from the National Development and Reform Commission.

The Sihe Coal Mine, part of the state-owned Jincheng Mining Group, is one of the largest collieries in Shanxi, producing 10.8 million tonnes a year, Xinhua said.