BEIJING (Reuters) - Flooding has killed 10 coal miners in Shanxi province, the nation's top coal producing region, after a weekend accident that initially trapped dozens of miners, the Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
Sixty-nine miners escaped the Wangzhuang coal mine inChangzhi on Saturday night, hours after it flooded, and anotherthree surfaced by themselves on Monday, Xinhua said.
China's coal mining industry is the deadliest in the world,as mine owners push production beyond safety limits in the faceof robust demand and soaring profits amid an economic boom.
"The floodwater, amounting to 10,000 cubic meters, was saidto come from a mined-out area in the vicinity," Xinhua said.
Bodies of the remaining 10 miners working underground atthe Wangzhuang mine were recovered early on Tuesday, it said,quoting rescue headquarters.
The state-owned colliery has annual output capacity of 1.2million tonnes, it said.
The government said last week that the death rate permillion tonnes of coal produced in the first half of the yearhad dropped to 1.05 from 1.485 for all of 2007, and from 3.08in 2005.
It did not give the exact number of coal mine deaths inthose six months.
A total of 3,786 Chinese coal miners died in gas blasts,flooding and other accidents in 2007, down 20 percent from 2006as the central government cracked down on small and unsafemines. But in 2008, there has been a renewed focus onproduction, to offset rising prices and supply disruptions.
Officials have said that China, undergoing rapidindustrialisation, may need another decade before there is adrastic fall in coal mine and other industrial deaths.
(Reporting by Guo Shipeng; Editing by Lucy Hornby and KenWills)
