Authorities have confirmed that all the miners trapped in Sunday's underground explosion in northern China are dead, bringing the fatality toll to 166 in one of the country's most serious mining disasters.

　　As the worst fears were being confirmed, another coal mine blast killed at least 13 miners yesterday in the southwestern province of Guizhou, the State Administration of Work Safety said on its Website.

　　"You can say that our country has the most dangerous mines in the world," Wang Deming, a mine safety expert, told the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily.

　　Wang blamed lack of automation, poor equipment, unskilled workers and low spending on technology for the high death rate in Chinese mines.

　　Sunday's blast was the worst since a September 2000 explosion in Guizhou Province killed 162 miners.

　　More than 120 workers escaped the state-owned Chenjiashan Coal Mine in Shaanxi Province on Sunday after what may have been back-to-back explosions. Many were seriously injured.

　　High temperatures in the mine and a build-up of toxic gas slowed the search for bodies at the mine, where 65 workers were initially listed as killed with 101 trapped and presumed dead.

　　"The spokesman for the mine has declared that all 166 miners were killed," Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

　　In an environment with a high density of coal, gas and carbon monoxide, "it's impossible that the miners still trapped underground can survive," Huo Shichang, head of the provincial coal mine industry administration, told a news conference.

　　The death rate for every 100 tons of coal produced in China is estimated to be 100 times that of the United States, Xinhua said.

　　Fires, explosions, floods and other accidents killed 4,153 coal miners in the first nine months of this year, according to the government, though it said the figure was 13 percent below the death toll for the same period last year.

　　China accounted for 80 percent of the world's coal mining deaths last year, while producing only 35 percent of its coal.

　　Though safety problems are said to be worse in smaller mines, the recent rash of accidents has involved several larger ones.

　　The state-owned Chenjiashan mine on the northern China plateau has 3,400 employees and produces 2.3 million tons of coal a year, according to Xinhua.

　　The mine suffers fires every three to six months, and Xinhua said a gas explosion in 2001 killed 38 people.

　　Chinese leaders, including Premier Wen Jiabao, have pledged more high-level attention to work safety.

　　Four officials, including an assistant mine director, have been arrested for not taking action to prevent a blast in the central province of Henan in October that killed 148 miners, the online edition of Xinhua reported yesterday.

　　The four, employees of the Daping Mine in Henan, "all bore heavy responsibility" in the blast, Xinhua said.

　　"The tragedy could have been prevented if no dereliction of duty had occurred," Xinhua said, citing prosecutors.

　　Despite government efforts to shift to cleaner natural gas and other power sources, coal still supplies two-thirds of China's total energy and generates 80 percent of its electricity.

　　(Reuters/AP)