By ASSOCIATED PRESS
A coal mine blast in northern China left at least 62 workers dead and another 13 missing, a government official said Thursday, marking the third massive coal mine disaster to hit China's disaster-plagued industry in recent weeks.
The explosion occurred Wednesday at the privately run Liuguantun Colliery in Tangshan, a city in Hebei province, when 186 miners were underground, said an official with the Tangshan Coal Mine and Safety Bureau who would only give his surname Zhang.
Eighty-two managed escaped on their own and 32 miners were immediately rescued but three of those later died, Zhang said. The bodies of 59 miners had been recovered from the mine by early Thursday, bringing the death toll to 62, he said.
Rescuers were searching for 13 still trapped in the mine.