China lowers death toll in Shanxi coal mine disaster to 82

The chaos in the aftermath of China's worst mine disaster in 17 years led to a revision in the death toll to 82 killed, local officials said at a press conference late on Saturday.

The people died in a gas explosion at the Liushenyu coal mine in China's northern province of Shanxi late on Friday. Initially state media reports said at least 90 people were killed.

Even at the lower number, the incident remains China's deadliest mining accident since 2009, when a gas explosion at the Xinxing Mine in Heilongjiang province killed 108 people.

Local officials said at the press conference the initial death toll from state media had been tallied in error.

"After the incident the scene was chaotic, the company's count of the number of workers was not clear, which led to the initial inaccurate number," Guo Xiaofang, the head of Shanxi's Qinyuan county, where the mine is located, said.

There were 247 workers on duty underground at the time of the explosion.

Two people remained unaccounted for, Guo said, while 128 were injured and hospitalised and 35 were uninjured.

The Liushenyu mine is owned by Shanxi Tongzhou Coal Coking Group and all four of its mines have been closed and company executives detained, local officials said at the news conference.

State-run newspaper the People's Daily published an editorial on the accident on its front page on Sunday morning calling for greater attention to safety in production and to "completely reverse the tendency to prioritise development over safety".

President Xi Jinping on Saturday had called for authorities to "spare no effort" in treating the injured and conducting search and rescue operations, according to Xinhua. He also ordered an investigation into the incident.

The mine has a production capacity of 1.2 million tonnes of coal per year, officials said at the press conference. China last year mined 4.83 billion tonnes of the fuel, which forms the backbone of its power sector.