Seventeen miners confirmed killed in coal mine accidents
19/8/2008 17:46
Rescuers today confirmed 17 miners had been killed in two separate coal
mine accidents in China yesterday.
Rescue workers who had been racing against
the clock to save 23 miners trapped after a gas explosion at Baijiagou Coal Mine
in Faku, a county in Liaoning Province, today recovered eight bodies from the
shaft, bringing the death toll to ten.
The explosion occurred at about 8:50
a.m. while 81 miners were underground, said Lang Yaoyun, director of the
provincial coal mine safety bureau.
Fourteen miners were brought out of the
pit late yesterday and taken to hospital where two of them died.
Three of the
injured were described as critical and five seriously hurt. They mostly
sustained fractures, burns and respiratory tract injuries, said Xu Chengben,
health bureau director of Faku County.
The fully-registered mine is a
joint-stock company with an annual output of 100,000 tonnes. Established in
1976, it has 450 staff.
In the southern Yunnan Province, rescuers found the
bodies of seven of the 10 miners trapped in a collapsed coal shaft in Mengla, a
county on the Sino-Laotian border yesterday.
Eight workers with Shanggang
Hongyuan Coal Industry Co Ltd, of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, went
down a transport tunnel to do repair work at 4:20 p.m. yesterday, according to
local government officials.
Part of the tunnel collapsed during the repairs
and trapped the workers. Two more workers then went down in an attempt to save
the eight trapped workers, but failed to emerge.
Rescue operations at both
sites are continuing.
Xinhua
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