Ninety six miners are feared dead following a coal mine gas blast early Thursday morning in north China's Shanxi Province, local safety authorities said.

By 3 PM, 15 workers were rescued or had managed to escape on their own, said sources with the coal mine safety bureau in Linfen, a resource-rich city 400 kilometers south of Taiyuan, the provincial capital.

Authorities disagreed on the exact time of the accident and the number of miners trapped in the village-run Xinyao pit, located in Hongtong County of Linfen.

A press release published on the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety website at midday reported 40 dead with 13 survivors and 74 unaccounted for.

The coal mine safety bureau in Linfen, however, would not confirm the figures in a phone interview with Xinhua. It put the death toll at 46 at midday, and suggested the number of workers in the pit totaled about 111.

The bureau had sent 13 rescue teams to the site.

Xinyao pit, owned by Ruizhiyuan Mining Co., is fully licensed and designed to produce 210,000 tons of coal annually.

Investigators suspected the accident was caused by illegal mining activities in an unauthorized part of the mine.

(Xinhua News Agency, December 6, 2007)