China: All trapped miners rescued after 3 days

All the 69 miners who were trapped in a flooded coal mine for over three days were rescued on Wednesday in central China's Henan Province, local officials said.

Most miners were escorted by rescuers and medical workers as they could not walk on their own, while some of them had to be put on stretchers.

The miners were soon rushed to nearby hospitals.

About 25 ambulances and 160 medical staff are standing by for the rescue, Xinhua news agency reported.

The flooding which occurred on Sunday morning at the Zhijian coal mine in Shanxian County, about 200 km west of Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, trapped 102 miners working underground.

Thirty-three of them managed to escape. The miners were fed with milk since Monday night when rescuers poured hundreds of litters of milk into a 800-metre-long ventilation pipe in the mine.

China's coal mines are notorious for their high accident rates. On Monday, officials in northern Shanxi Province confirmed that at least nine miners died in an accident on July 5, which was suppressed by the mine owners.

A total of 1,792 coal miners died in 1,066 mishaps in China, the world's top coal producer and consumer, during the first half of this year.

In 2006, coal mine accidents killed 4,746 people in China in 2006 with an average of 13 deaths per day.