Rescuers are working round the clock to rescue 30 miners still trapped following a gas explosion in a mine in North China's Shanxi Province.

The accident, the latest hit to the nation's disaster-plagued coal mining industry, occurred on Sunday in the Jiaojiazhai Coal Mine, ran by the Xuangang Company, part of the Datong Coal Mine Group, in the northern town of Xinzhou, according to the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS).

At least 17 miners have been confirmed dead and another 30 remain missing, local officials said.

A total of 393 miners were working in the pit at the time of the explosion, 346 of them making a slim escape.

Initial investigations indicated that a sudden powercut underground led to gas accumulating and exploding, CCTV reported yesterday.

Li Tingjun, head of the Datong Coal Mine Group's rescue team, said rescuers were still 400-500 metres from the explosion site, digging their way through a cave-in caused by the blast.

The high density of gas accumulated in the pit had delayed rescue efforts, with rescuers working to restore the ventilation system, officials said.

"Primary analysis indicates that a violation of work safety regulations led to the tragedy," said Yu Youjun, governor of Shanxi.

Precautions should be taken by the rescuers in searching for the trapped miners to avoid another gas blast, said SAWS Minister Li Yizhong, who rushed to the scene on Sunday evening.

Recent SAWS statistics indicate that 9,007 people were killed in more than 530,000 workplace accidents and traffic accidents in the first 10 months of 2006.

And in recent years thousands of miners have been killed by explosions, floods, collapses and other disasters in the poorly regulated mining industry.

To curb the occurrence of such accidents, SAWS and several other ministerial departments recently issued a regulation urging the instant closure of 16 kinds of unqualified collieries around the nation.