Here are some of China’s major coal mining disasters this century

A gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s northern province of Shanxi, the country’s main coal mining province, killed at least 82 people, local officials said Saturday.  The cause of the explosion, which took place on Friday evening at the Liushenyu coal mine in the city of Changzhi, is under investigation.

With a size larger than Greece and a population of around 34 million, the province’s hundreds of thousands of miners dug 1.3 billion tons (1.17 billion metric tons) of coal last year — nearly a third of China’s total. Mining disasters are common in China, where rapid industrialization came with intense resource exploitation, poor working conditions and a weak regulatory framework.

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