Thursday, December 8 2005 17:19 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Tanghshan (China): An explosion at a coal mine in northern China today (December 8, 2005) killed 54 people and 22 more were missing, state media said.

The official Xinhua news agency said that 104 of the 186 miners at the Liuguantun Colliery near Tangshan were trapped by the blast today, while the rest escaped the explosion.

Rescuers managed to bring out 31 of the trapped and found 51 bodies, although three of the survivors later died taking the overall death toll to 54, Xinhua said.

An official from the coal mine's district safety office said the mine shaft, owned by a company called Hengyuan Co. Ltd., was still under construction.

"They haven't started collecting coal from there yet," the official surnamed Zhang told The incident comes 10 days after a gas explosion at the state-run Dongfeng coal mine near Qitaihe city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang that killed 171 people, one of the worst mine accidents in recent years.

The Liuguantun mine, 164 kilometers from Beijing, was formerly state-owned but is now privately-run, according to the China News Service website. It produces 150,000 tons of coal a year, the website said.