50 Chinese coal miners killed in three separate accidents

Accidents blamed on natural gas leaks have killed at least 50 miners in three separate Chinese mines.

Twenty-five miners were killed in an explosion in a private coal mine in Wenshan county in the southwestern province of Yunnan, says the Xinhua News Agency.

An official of the Wenshan government confirmed there was a fatal accident but said no one who had details was available to comment. Ten other miners were injured, Xinhua said.

It said the acting governor of Yunnan, Xu Rongkai, was en route to the scene.

In central China, 18 miners suffocated when natural gas flooded their mine in Loudi, a city in the Hunan province.

The city-owned mine was properly licensed and had a good safety record, said an official of the city mine bureau.

The miners were killed when they broke open a vein of gas that left them without air to breathe, the mine official said. He said there were 30 men in the mine at the time, and 12 escaped.

An explosion killed seven miners in the city of Pingxian in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, the newspaper Legal Daily reported. It said one miner was missing.

Local officials said they couldn't confirm the report.