Beijing: Chinese state media says 24 coal miners have been killed in underground fire in the country's northeast.
The official Xinhua News Agency says another 52 miners were injured in the disaster early Wednesday in the mine run by the state-owned Fuxin Coal Corp. in Liaoning province.
China's mines are among the most dangerous in the world, although improved safety measures have vastly lowered the number of fatalities in mine accidents.
The government's China National Coal Administration reported 1,067 deaths in 604 coal mining accidents in 2013, down 23 percent from the year before. That's down from more than 6,000 a decade ago.
The decline has coincided with plateauing demand for coal as the Chinese economy cools from the dizzying heights of the last few years.
