Eight people were found alive in a Chinese gypsum mine yesterday, state media said, five days after it collapsed in an accident that reportedly prompted its owner to commit suicide.
The mine, in the eastern province of Shandong, caved in on Friday last week while 29 people were working underground.
One miner was killed and 11 escaped or were rescued soon afterward, leaving 17 trapped in the shaft, previous Chinese media reports said.
It was the latest deadly accident in a nation where safety rules are often flouted to cut costs.
However, signs of life were detected by monitoring machines and rescuers were in contact with eight survivors, Xinhua news agency said.
Plans are being made to bring them to the surface, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.
The mine owner drowned himself at the scene on Sunday while he was helping with the rescue efforts, Xinhua reported previously.
The cause of the collapse is under investigation, but industrial safety regulations are often flouted in China and corruption enables bosses to pursue profits at the cost of worker safety.
Four officials in Pingyi, where the mine is located, including the head of the Chinese Communist Party and the head of government, were removed from their posts on Tuesday in the wake of the accident.
The gypsum mine and others in its vicinity were ordered to stop production in October by local authorities because of a risk of sinkholes, but it kept operating secretly, the Beijing Times reported.
Accidents linked to lax industrial safety enforcement have seen hundreds of people killed in China this year, including this month’s landslide in the southern commercial hub of Shenzhen and chemical blasts in Tianjin in August.
China is the world’s largest coal producer and official data showed colliery accidents killed 931 people last year.
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