The death toll from a gas explosion at a coal mine in northern China rose to 24 yesterday, as rescuers gave up hope of finding 20 miners alive in a separate accident, state media said.
Rescuers working their way through the shaft of the Yaotou colliery in Shaanxi Province found another body early yesterday, four days after a blast ripped through the mine, Xinhua news agency said.
Hopes of finding at least five other missing miners alive were slight, a local official said.
“It is more than 80 hours after the accident. The concentration of the poisonous gas is high and their chance of survival is slim,” Xinhua quoted the unnamed official as saying.
At least 36 miners were believed to be working when the explosion occurred. Only seven of them managed to escape.
Meanwhile, rescuers in neighboring Henan Province gave up hope of finding 20 trapped miners alive after a mine flood on Wednesday, Xinhua said.
It would take at least another week to reach the area in the Mazhuang colliery where the miners were believed to be trapped when the flood engulfed the mine, the report said.
Rescue work has been hampered by debris and water in the mining shaft making it difficult to reach the missing workers.
China has a dismal work safety record, with thousands of people dying every year in mines, factories and on construction sites.
Nearly 3,800 people died in Chinese coal mines last year, official figures state. However, independent monitors say the real figure is likely much higher as many accidents are covered up.
In other developments, five sailors were killed and three more missing after a Chinese container ship sank in waters off the country’s northeast, Xinhua reported yesterday.
The Xinmingfa 17 sank on Saturday afternoon with 146 containers and 14 people onboard, Xinhua reported.
It was en route from Yingkou, a port in Liaoning Province, to Fuzhou on the east coast. The report did not explain why it sank.
Six people onboard were rescued by ships and helicopters. But at least five have joined the country’s long list of people killed in work and transport accidents, including in its fast-growing shipping sector.
In the year to the end of August, China experienced 344 deaths from ship and boat accidents, a fall of 4 percent on the same period a year earlier, Xinhua reported last month.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS