At least two persons were killed and nine others missing days after a coal mine they were working in was flooded in the country's northwest Shaanxi Province.
The accident took place on Monday at Zhaojin Coal Mine in Yaozhou District when 67 workers were in the shaft, 56 of them managed to escape and 11 were missing.
The first body was retrieved from the Zhaojin coal mine in the city of Tongchuan at 11:30 PM yesterday, and the second was found at around 5:00 AM today, an official said.
So far rescuers had pumped out all the flood water, about 21,000 cubic meters, and were clearing sludge from the shaft to search for nine others missing, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The cause of the flood is still not known.
The risk for coal-mining accidents in China is one of the highest in the world.
According to a 2003 government report, the coal miners' death rate per one million population was about 37 times that of America's coal-mining death rate.
