Three new explosions tore through a Chinese coal mine early yesterday where a weekend blast killed 166 miners. Emergency workers who were retrieving bodies from the earlier disaster escaped without injury.
Around 61 rescue workers were evacuated from the Chenjiashan Coal Mine following the latest explosions, which occurred at 3:25, 6:15 and 7:40am.
The mine in Shaanxi Province is filled with natural gas, and the new explosions were "not unexpected."
Rescuers have found the bodies of 65 miners killed on Sunday, which occurred about 8 kilometers from the mouth of the vast mine.
On Wednesday, the government declared the remaining 101 missing miners dead.
The announcement came after officials said underground fires and high levels of gas and toxic carbon monoxide were hampering rescue efforts at the mine.
The disaster was the deadliest to hit China's accident-plagued mines in recent years.
The death toll surpassed the 162 miners killed in a mine fire in southern China in 2000.
The explosion on Sunday was the second Chinese mine disaster within weeks to kill more than 100 miners and occurred despite a nationwide government campaign to improve mine safety.
Rescue officials have closed access to the section of the Chenjiashan mine, and emergency crews planned to try to douse a fire there with water and nitrogen gas.
The Chenjiashan mine employs 3,400 people and produced 2.3 million tons of coal last year.
Another gas explosion at the mine in 2001 killed 38 people.
Meanwhile, rescuers found three more bodies yesterday morning after an explosion rocked a coal mine on Wednesday in southwestern China's Guizhou Province, raising the death toll to 16.
Sources from local authorities said 49 miners were working underground when the explosion occurred at 1:30am on Wednesday in Panxian County.
Sixteen men were trapped underground and 33 fled the site.
Four were injured and hospitalized.
The coal mine is a licensed township-owned enterprise. The cause of the accident is still under investigation.