17 miners killed in gas blasts in China

Seventeen coal miners were killed and 11 others trapped in two gas explosions in China in the past 24 hours, in the latest accidents in the country's coal mines, which have a poor safety record.
    
Twelve miners were killed late Sunday in the Donggou Colliery mines in Jiexiu city in northern Shanxi province, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
    
"The workers were killed when they violated safety rules and demolished a wall between the shafts where gas was accumulated in high density," the agency quoted a spokesman as saying.
    
It said five executives of the Colliery had been detained. Four people who survived the tragedy were under close observation in hospital.
    
In a second incident, five miners were killed and six missing after a similar gas burst in another coal mine in China's southwest Yunnan province.
      
The miners were working in a shaft of Malishu Coal Mine in Shuangbai County when the incident happened at about 1.50 am local time.
    
Five bodies were recovered from the site by rescue workers.
    
China's coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world and thousands of miners are killed every year. Last month, in a major accident, under eight miners were killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in Heilongjiang province in northeastern China.