Rising water levels have forced the suspension of efforts to rescue 29 Chinese miners trapped for three days in a flooded iron ore pit, the official Xinhua news agency reported today.
Rescue teams were pumping out water and dredging silt from the mine shaft when a sudden rise of the water level forced them to be evacuated.
Officials at the pit, in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, believed the miners still had a chance of survival and were discussing a new strategy, Xinhua said without elaborating. Six other miners rescued from the pit on Thursday were in good condition in hospital.
Separately, Xinhua said rescuers had found the bodies of four miners and were still searching for three others after a coal mine fire on Friday in the northeastern province of Liaoning.
Small areas of the mine were still burning, it said. Two miners escaped unhurt. China has called on mining and manufacturing companies to dramatically raise spending on safety measures to cut industrial accidents that kill more than 16,000 people annually.
The country's coal mines are the world's deadliest, with 4,746 miners killed in thousands of blasts, floods and other accidents last year.