A gas explosion on Friday left at least 48 miners dead in East China's Jiangxi Province, official sources said.

The blast occurred at 11:45 am at the Jianxin Coal Mine of the Fengcheng Coal Mine Bureau in Jiangxi.

The Jianxin Coal Mine, with an annual capacity of 600,000 tons, is a large State-owned mine.

The cause of the explosion was still unknown at press time.

The accident came just a day after another workplace tragedy at a quarry in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province killed 12 people and injured 11 others.

A stone wall near the pit at a quarry in Fugu County, which is more than 900 kilometres from the provincial capital Xi'an, suddenly collapsed at around 1:20 pm, burying all the 23 workers in a workshed near the cliff, eyewitnesses said.

Fifteen minutes after the accident, senior officials from the local government and relevant departments reached the pit to oversee rescue efforts at the site, said a Xinhua report.

As of 4 am on Friday, rescuers had found all the buried workers, it said. Twelve people were confirmed dead and the other 11 were injured and sent to hospital.

The investigations into the collapse are still under way, said an official with the provincial Work Safety Bureau.

The latest data from the SAWS, which is China's top work safety watchdog, showed that by Friday 114 severe workplace accidents have been recorded this year, killing at least 1,997 people.

In China, the severe workplace accident refers to those that kill more than 10 people.

SAWS' statistics also indicate that more than 720,000 workplace accidents have occurred during the first nine months, killing more than 96,000 people.

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