BEIJING, China: Local authorities said a fire at the Shanjiaoshu coal mine in Guizhou province, southern China, killed 16 people over the weekend.

In a statement, the Panzhou city government said that an initial investigation showed that those who died were trapped after a conveyor belt caught fire.

Despite the large-scale expansion of its wind and solar power capacity, China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, still depends heavily on coal for electricity.