At least 16 workers were killed and seven trapped underground after a major fire engulfed a gold mine in east China's Shandong province, officials said today.
The fire broke out last night at Luoshan gold mine in Zhaoyuan city and rescuers workers managed to pull over 300 workers to safety.
Most of the 16 workers died due to suffocation caused by overwhelming toxic smoke in the underground mine, officials said.
Some of them died in hospital, according to medical workers at Luoshan gold mine.
The fire broke out when 329 miners were working underground, local officials said. The underground blaze had been put out by this morning but power to parts of the shaft was yet to be restored.
All but seven miners had been lifted to the ground, official Xinhua news agency reported.
The rescue authorities initially reported that eight remained trapped but later corrected the figure to seven.
The rescued miners appeared in good health but had their eyes covered with white cloth to avoid sudden exposure to the sun.
Dozens of the injured had been hospitalised.
Rescuers said they had established contact with the seven trapped miners and were on track to lift them from the mine.
An initial investigation showed that the fire was likely to have been caused by an underground cable. The owner of the mine was taken into police custody, a spokesman with the rescue headquarters said.
Luo Lin, head of the state administration of work safety, led a ten-member work-team to Zhaoyuan. Previously, top provincial officials had arrived at the scene to oversee the rescue and the investigation.
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