At least 16 people were killed in a coal mine fire on Sunday in southwest China’s Guizhou province, local officials said. The fire broke out at the Shanjiaoshu Coal Mine at around 8:10am (0010 GMT), the Panzhou City government said in a notice posted to its website on Sunday night. “It was preliminarily determined that the conveyor belt caught fire, causing 16 people to be trapped,” it added, with no further details on what was damaged or how the fire began. Emergency personnel extinguished the blaze and temperatures at the site returned to normal, but “after preliminary verification, 16 people have no vital signs”, the notice said. The Panzhou City mine is about 3,600 kilometres (2,250 miles) southwest of the capital Beijing.