At least 203 miners have died in northeast China after an earthquake apparently triggered a gas explosion underground.

The catastrophe is China's deadliest mining disaster since Communist rule began in 1949.

The explosion yesterday afternoon at the Sunjiawan mine in Liaoning province also injured 22 others and trapped 13 people underground, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The cause of the blast, which occurred 242m (794ft) underground, was under investigation. Zhang Yunfu, the vice general manager of the Fuxin mine group, told Xinhua that the explosion occurred about 10 minutes after an earthquake.

President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders issued orders for local officials "to spare no effort to rescue those stranded in the mine," Xinhua said. It said they called for "strict measures" to prevent any more such disasters.

A government work team headed by a member of China’s Cabinet arrived at Sunjiawan today to help find the missing, treat the injured and prepare compensation for the families of the victims, Xinhua said.

China has suffered a string of deadly mining disasters in recent months, despite a nationwide safety campaign, as miners are pressed to work in dangerous conditions to satisfy the growing demand for coal of China's burgeoning economy.

A blast in the northern province of Shaanxi in November killed 166 miners. Another explosion in October killed 148. Before that, the deadliest reported mining accident in recent years was a fire in southern China that killed 162 miners in 2000.

However, until the late 1990s, when the government began regularly announcing statistics on mining deaths, many industrial accidents were never publicly reported.

In 1942, China’s northeast was the site of the world’s deadliest coal mining disaster when an accident killed 1,549 miners in Japanese-occupied Manchuria during World War II.

The Sunjiawan mine in the Fuxin region has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million tons, Xinhua said.

A duty officer at the provincial Safety Production Supervision Bureau said she had no details about the accident and directed queries to the department in charge of coal mines. Calls to that department and others were not answered.

An official at the Fuxin Coal Industry (Group) Co. said he was too busy to comment.

China’s mines are by far the world’s deadliest, with more than 6,000 deaths last year in mine floods, explosions and fires. China says it accounted for 80 percent of all coal mining deaths worldwide last year.

The government said the toll was 8 percent below the number killed the previous year. But the government says China’s fatality rate per ton of coal mined is still 100 times that of the United States.

Mine owners and local officials are frequently blamed for putting profits ahead of safety, especially as the nation’s soaring energy needs increase demand for coal. Underground explosions often are blamed on a lack of ventilation equipment to remove gas that seeps from the coal bed.

The Chinese government says it has budgeted some 4 billion yuan (US$500 million) since 2000 to improve ventilation in mines and reduce other safety hazards.

Fuxin is one of China’s oldest coal mining regions, and many of its mines have already been depleted, according to state media reports. Miners in many such regions must tunnel far underground to reach coal seams, and the risk of explosion due to methane gas is high.

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