The incident occurred at about 1.30 a.m. in Guizhou province, and rescue teams managed to rescue seven of 23 workers inside the Guanglong coal mine, in Anlong county, at the time of the explosion, reports Efe news.

Emergency services found the bodies of 14 miners, while two other workers remained trapped underground.

On December 14, a coal mine in Sichuan province flooded, leaving at least five dead and 13 miners trapped, while 329 employees managed to escape.

China's mines, especially those mining coal - the country's main energy source - are among the world's most dangerous and see high accident rates, although fatalities have fallen significantly in recent years.

In 2018, there were 224 accidents in Chinese coal mines with 333 deaths, a 0.9 per cent drop year-on-year in the number of accidents and a 13.1 per cent decrease in the number of dead, according to authorities.

The figure is nearly 20 times lower than those recorded in the early 2000s when up to 7,000 people died yearly in mine accidents due to the rapid industrial expansion China was undergoing - often at the expense of proper regulatio