A gas explosion at a coal mine left at least 18 workers dead and two others missing, Chinese state media reported on Wednesday.

Chinese authorities are blaming illegal mining activities for the explosion that occurred Tuesday morning at a small coal mine in the city of Shizuishan in the western region of Ningxia as 20 miners were working underground, state-backed Xinhua News agency reported.

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The owner of the mine Linli Coal Mining Co. Ltd. is already under police custody, local officials said in a press conference on Wednesday. Linli Coal Mining Co. Ltd. is a relatively small company that can produce up to 450,000 metric tons of coal annually.

Preliminary investigations pointed illegal mining as the cause of the explosion, but officials refused to elaborate details.

Meanwhile, Wu Yuguo, the city's vice mayor, said the destruction of the mine shaft plus the hazardous gas concentration make the rescue efforts difficult. But in spite of the dangerous situation, firefighters and coal mine rescue specialists continued to look for the two missing mine workers on Wednesday, the Voice of America News reported.

The recent incident has the second biggest number of fatalities in a single coal-mining accident in 2016, The Wall Street Journal noted. Last March, 20 workers died after a colliery explosion occurred in central Shanxi province.

However, Beijing has seen positive outcomes after it consolidated its coal sector. In fact, in 2015, coal mines-related death decreased steeply from 6,995 in 2002 to 768 in 2015.

Furthermore, as part of the push for a wider state control on coal operations, the government ordered to phase out half a billion tons of coal capacity by the end of the decade.

Tagscoal explosion, coal mine, Chinese coal mine, Gas Explosion, explosion accidents, coal