BEIJING (AP) _ A gas explosion ripped through a coal mine in eastern China Tuesday, killing at least 63 miners and leaving 23 others missing 1,500 feet underground, officials said.
The explosion struck the Luling coal mine near the city of Hefei at 4:13 p.m., the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Hefei is about 600 miles south of Beijing in Anhui province.
Rescuers recovered 63 bodies by early Wednesday and have found no signs that the other miners are alive, said an official reached by telephone in the mine's adminstration office.
Xinhua said 27 of the 113 people working in the mine at the time of the blast were rescued.
The cause of the blast was under investigation, the officials said.
China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, with more than 5,000 fatalities reported last year in explosions, floods and cave-ins.
Explosions are common and often are blamed on a lack of ventilation to clear natural gas that seeps out of the coal bed.
Other accidents are blamed on lack of fire-control equipment or indifference by mine managers to safety rules.
