Authorities investigating collapse that left 10 dead

The Ministry of Emergency Management urged local authorities to investigate the cause of a mountainside slope collapse on Saturday in a coal mine region that killed 10 people and injured seven in Gansu province and to take steps to prevent future accidents.

Minister Huang Ming said that local emergency and fire rescue workers should treat the injured and deal with potential risks that may cause other accidents.

"Local departments need to clearly recognize the current high risks of coal mine production and tighten efforts to maintain safety," he said.

The ministry has sent a working group led by officials from the National Mine Safety Administration to the scene of the accident in Jingtai county, Baiyin city, to investigate.

China Central Television reported that according to Jingtai's Party committee office, at about 11:15 am on Saturday, a slope collapsed and buried 17 workers with a company that specializes in explosions for civil use affiliated with the Shanxi Coking Coal Group. The workers were traveling in vehicles on a road along a mountain on their way to the Gansu Hongsheng Coal Industry site in the county.

As of 8 pm on Saturday, all 17 people had been found. Ten of them had been killed.

The provincial emergency management department is conducting an in-depth investigation into the cause of the accident while striving to rectify mines in the province.

Explosions are key in the mining of coal.

According to an article published in February on the WeChat account of the Shanxi Coking Coal Group, the explosion company set up a branch in Jingtai, signed a contract with the Hongsheng Coal Industry and conducted its first blast in Hongsheng's coal mining area in January.

Last year in China, there were 356 mining accidents, a year-on-year decrease of 16 percent, according to the National Mine Safety Administration. Those accidents killed 503 people, a 12.7 percent decline year-on-year.