Nine miners have been confirmed dead in a coal mine gas blast that happened in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Saturday, local official sources said on Monday.

Rescuers are still searching for one miner who has been missing after the gas explosion occurred early on Saturday, said the sources with the publicity department of Fuyuan County Committee of the Communist Party of China. The blast occurred around 6:00 a.m. Saturday at Shunxing Coal Mine in Fuyuan County, Qujing City in eastern Yunnan, when 27 miners were working underground. Fourteen of them managed to escape and 13 others were trapped underground.

Rescuers had recovered the bodies of seven miners as of 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, and five injured miners were rushed to local hospitals. Of the five injured, two died after failing to respond to medical treatment, the sources said.

The coal mine is a legal coal mining venture built in 1984 and capable of producing 90,000 tons of coal a year. Last Friday, the county coal mine safety watchdog inspected the mine and ordered it to suspend production to carry out rectification.

Coal mine managers, however, disobeyed the order and secretly organized the miners to go down the shaft and work at night.

Local officials are investigating into the cause of the accident.

(Xinhua News Agency October 8, 2007)