It seems 44 miners have been trapped in a flooded coal mine in
Zuoyun County, north China's Shanxi Province, rescuers said Saturday
night.
A total of 145 miners were working underground when the flooding
accident took place on Thursday night, and 101 managed to escape,
rescuers said.
Local safety authorities had reported earlier that five miners
were trapped. In this sense, the actual situation of the accident
was covered up, according to Gong Anku, head of the Shanxi
Provincial Bureau of Work Safety.
Miners who survived the flooding confirmed that more than five
miners were working underground when the accident happened.
Nine managerial persons of the coal mine have been detained by
the police. However, the head of the coal mine has gone into
hiding.
Some managerial staff of the coal mine had rented taxis to
transfer family members of the trapped miners to the Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region, Shanxi's close neighbor, to prevent them from
rioting and speaking to the press, the miners said.
The flooding took place at 8:30 PM. Thursday at Xinjing Coal
Mine, a legal township coal producing entity in Zuoyun County,
northern Shanxi. The mine has an annual production capacity of
90,000 tons.
Two Xinhua correspondents have rushed to Datong, the
administrative base for Zuoyun County, to investigate the
incident.
Nearly 200 rescuers are working at the mine site. The cause of
the flooding is being investigated.
(Xinhua News Agency May 21, 2006)