Eleven coal miners were killed in central China’s Henan province on Thursday when a mine shaft elevator they were riding plunged 30 metres due to a mechanical failure, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The miners were travelling up a 260 metre shaft in the elevator when a bolt broke, plunging them to their deaths, the report said.

China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal mine, also has the world’s deadliest mining industry.

China’s government, concerned about possible power shortages this summer, in recent weeks ordered the reopening of small coal mines, effectively reversing a long-running policy of shutdowns due largely to safety concerns.

Four-fifths of China’s electricity is generated by coal-fired plants, which face increasingly tight supplies of the hydrocarbon.

The death toll in China’s coal mining industry was 3,786 in 2007, although that was down 40 percent from the mid-1990s, according to the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety.

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