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At least 73 miners have been killed in an explosion at a coal mine in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi.
Rescue workers are at the scene in Gujiao city attempting to rescue dozens of miners who remain trapped.
More than 400 men were at work at the time of the explosion but most managed to escape, the state-run Xinhua news agency reports.
China has the world's deadliest mining industry, with 3,200 deaths reported last year.
Rescue workers said 113 miners were in hospital, with 21 being in a critical condition.
CHINA'S WORST MINE DISASTERS Feb 1950: Yiluo mine, Henan province - 174 dead May 1960: Laobaidong mine, Shanxi province - 684 dead Sept 2000: Muchonggou mine, Guizhou province - 162 dead Nov 2004: Chenjiashan mine, Shaanxi province - 166 dead Feb 2005: Sunjiawan mine, Liaoning province - 210 dead Nov 2005: Dongfeng mine, Heilongjiang - 171 dead Aug 2007: Xintai City, Shandong province - 181 dead Dec 2007: Rui Zhiyuan mine, Shanxi province - 105 dead
State-controlled China Central TV (CCTV) showed rescue crews entering an elevator to be lowered into the mine shaft while injured miners were taken into ambulances.
CCTV said about 100 rescuers were working to free the remaining trapped miners but a fire in the shaft was blocking their progress.
Some of the trapped miners had used mobile phones to call relatives.
Most of the injured were being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning, doctors in Gujiao told Xinhua.
Exposure to the gas, which is odourless and colourless, is potentially fatal.
'Safety improving'
The true figure of those killed in China's mines every year is believed to be far higher than official figures indicate, says the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Beijing, as many accidents go unreported.
Illegal mining, official corruption and weak safety inspections lead to tens of thousands of accidents each year, our correspondent says.
China has said safety is improving, with the official death toll from coal mining accidents falling by 15% in 2008 compared with the previous year.
Xinhua also reported that the number of accidents had fallen by 19% to 413,700 last year.
Location of Shanxi province within China According to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, no less than 73 miners have been killed and a further 113 hospitalised after a gas blast in a coal mine in China on Sunday. The incident occurred before dawn in the mine in Gujiao City, located in the Shanxi province. 436 miners were underground in the mine at the time.

Xinhua stated that 340 of the miners had been rescued following the explosion, 21 of which are reported to have sustained serious injuries.

The mine belongs to the Shanxi Jiaomei Group, which is the country's largest producer of coking coal, and operates 28 mines.

China's mining industry is the most dangerous in the world, with 3,200 fatalities recorded in 2008. The safety record is improving, however, as that figure is a 15 percent decrease over the previous year.