Body retrieved from flooded mine in Qinghai

After more than a week of efforts with the help of 22 drilling rigs, rescuers on Sunday found the body of one of 19 miners trapped 90 meters underground in a coal mine in Northwest China's Qinghai province, a news release issued on Monday said.

Twenty-one miners were working in the mine in Gangca county, Haibei Tibetan autonomous prefecture, when it was flooded by mud around noon on Aug 14, the province's emergency management department said.

Two men were lifted out soon after the accident. One was dead and the other injured, it said.

The mine had been ordered to suspend production and rectify irregularities on Aug 2, Yin Maowen, deputy head of the prefecture, told a news conference shortly after the accident, without elaborating.

He said the operator was screening for safety hazards as required by the provincial mine safety administration when the accident occurred.

The complicated conditions in the flooded coal mine had posed huge challenges to the rescue mission, he told another news conference, adding there was a high risk of secondary disasters.

Qinghai, which is in its major flood season, has seen frequent rainfall recently, and drainage facilities have been set up at the site of the accident to avoid further damage from water logging and infiltration, Lyu Qiang, chief engineer at the provincial water resources department, told Xinhua News Agency.

The mine was put into operation in September 2009, with a designed production capacity of 900,000 metric tons a year.

More than 40,000 pieces of emergency relief equipment and materials had been dispatched to the site, including large drilling machines and excavators, the Ministry of Emergency Management said in a news release issued on Aug 15.