Southwest China coal mine fire claims 16 lives

Sunday, at least 16 people were killed in a coal mine fire in Guizhou province, southwest China, according to local officials.

The fire broke out at the Shanjiaoshu Coal Mine at approximately 8:10 a.m. (0010 GMT) on Sunday night, the Panzhou City government announced on its website.

"It has been determined that the conveyor belt caught fire, resulting in the entrapment of 16 people," the report continued, without elaborating on what was damaged or how the fire started.

The fire was extinguished by emergency personnel, and temperatures returned to normal, but "after preliminary verification, 16 people have no vital signs," according to the notice.

The Panzhou City mine is located approximately 3,600 kilometres (2,250 miles) southwest of Beijing.

China operates thousands of coal mines despite its commitment to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. China is the world's largest emitter of the pollutants driving climate change.

Despite the fact that safety standards in the country's mining industry have improved over the past few decades, accidents continue to plague the industry, frequently due to lax enforcement of protocols, particularly at the most primitive sites.

According to official statistics, 245 individuals perished in 168 accidents in 2012.

Last month, an explosion at a coal mine in northern China's Shaanxi province killed eleven people, nine of whom were trapped inside. According to reports from state-run media at the time, two additional survivors made it to the surface before succumbing to their injuries.

In February, a 180-meter (590-foot) slope gave way at a coal mine in the remote and sparsely populated Alxa League of the northern Inner Mongolia region. Dozens of people and vehicles were buried beneath a mountain of debris, but for months, authorities withheld the final death toll.

Only in June was it revealed that 53 people had been killed.

As an indication of the severity of the incident, Chinese President Xi Jinping at the time ordered authorities to "do everything possible to search for and rescue the missing people... and protect the security of people's lives, property, and overall social stability."

According to local government statements, authorities deployed hundreds of personnel and over a hundred pieces of equipment as part of the rescue operation.

And in December, when a gold mine in the northwestern Xinjiang region collapsed, about forty people were working underground.