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BEIJING: Sixty-nine workers trapped in a flooded Chi
nese coal mine for over two days are alive, but it is impossible to
say whether rescue efforts will succeed, authorities said Tuesday.
“The 69 miners are still alive.
We are in contact with them at the moment,” State Administration
of Work Safety spokeswoman An Yuanjie told AFP.
An said rescuers were working to
pump water out of the Zhijian mine, in central China’s Henan
province, and that oxygen was being delivered to the trapped miners.
A statement released by the
administration on Tuesday said milk had also been delivered to the
miners, but warned that gas levels were rising in the pit where they
were trapped and that their strength was declining.
“The more time that passes, the
greater the danger to the miners,” the statement said.
An said she could not give any
assessment on the odds of their survival.
The state-owned mine flooded on
Sunday morning with 102 workers underground. Thirty-three miners
escaped but the other 69 were trapped in a section of 600 meters
(yards) of tunnels that were submerged.
Three hundred soldiers were sent
to the mine to help in the rescue efforts, initially to block off
more floodwaters from entering the pit.
The official Xinhua news agency
said on Monday that the first phase of rescue efforts had been
hampered by heavy rain and fog.
Rescuers had struggled to put in
place water pumps outside the entrance to the pit due to the muddy
conditions and relentless rain, Xinhua said.
Fog had caused visibility in the
area to drop to just 15 meters (50 feet), while trucks carrying
rescue supplies had been left stranded on impassable roads, local
officials were cited as saying.
The Zhijian coal mine is about
200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Henan’s capital, Zhengzhou.
If the miners do not survive, the
accident would be one of the deadliest to have been reported in
China’s notoriously dangerous coal mining industry this year.
More than 4,700 workers were
killed last year, according to official figures, although
independent labor groups put the death toll at up to 20,000
annually.
--AFP
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