Ten miners dead in larger mining disaster in China

Rescuers searching for remaining trapped workers at a Chinese gold mine after the dramatic recovery of 11 survivors on Sunday found nine bodies, a local official said on Monday, bringing the death toll to 10, with one miner still missing . A total of 22 miners working about 600 meters underground were trapped on Jan. 10 after an explosion at the Hushan mine in Qixia, a key gold producing region in China's coastal Shandong province. Eleven of them were pulled out alive on Sunday after two weeks underground, including one in a very weak condition that the rescue teams could not take care of. Yantai Mayor Chen Fei said rescue workers continued to search from Sunday to Monday afternoon and found the bodies of nine miners, state broadcaster CCTV reported. That means a total of 10 miners have been confirmed to have died after a previous coma worker died at the mine and their remains were lifted to the surface, Chen said, adding that one miner is still was missed. Search is difficult and the water level is high, but until the missing worker is found, work will not stop, the CCTV report added. The 11 miners freed on Sunday were rescued much earlier than expected after it was found that steel pipes in a blocked mine shaft prevented debris from falling deeper, state media said. The vent, which was the most practical way to get the workers up, had been cleared to a depth of 368 meters (1,207 feet), Xiao Wenru, chief engineer for mine rescue, told Xinhua News Agency on Monday. "At this point, we discovered that there were some steel pipes supporting the blockage ... there is almost no blockage under the steel pipes," Xiao said. Xiao told Xinhua on Sunday that there was a breakthrough in the rescue effort after clearing some blockages and finding the "voids underneath". Most of the 11 miners were in good condition. Officials had previously said that they may have to wait an additional 15 days before being rescued as their planned escape route is blocked. China's mines are among the deadliest in the world. The country recorded 573 mine-related deaths in 2020, according to the National Agency for Mine Safety.