Two senior officials respectively in charge of work safety and coal mine safety left Wednesday evening for the site of a coal mine blast in northern Hebei Province.

Li Yizhong, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, and Zhao Tiechui, director of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, were in a 14-member team to direct rescue efforts on the blast site.

Xinhua reporter at the accident site in Liuguantun Colliery in Kaiping District of Tangshan verified that more than 186 miners were working underground when the blast occurred at 3:30 PM Wednesday.

The death toll in a coal mine explosion in Tangshan City rose to 74 and 32 are still missing till 11:00 AM Thursday, the city government said. 

The coal mine used to be a state-owned mine run by the local government with a designed production capacity of 300,000 tons per year. In 2002, it was transformed into a private mine with an annual capacity of 150,000 tons.

It is said to be a low-gas coal mine, according to a report from the provincial administration of coal mine safety.

(Xinhua News Agency December 8, 2005)