BEIJING, Aug 8: Hopes faded on Monday for 101 workers trapped deep underground in a flooded coal mine in southern China with water levels rapidly rising. Hundreds of rescuers were scrambling to save the miners, but their progress was severely hampered by the depth of the water, a local official said. He described their chances of survival as ‘slim’.

The accident happened on Sunday at the Daxing Coal Mine, 265 kilometres northeast of the Guangdong provincial capital Guangzhou. State media said the number of trapped workers may rise.

“We still have not found out the exact number of the trapped yet,” Xinhua news agency quoted a local Communist Party official, Chen Ganglin, as saying. He said many managers of the colliery fled after the accident.

“But we have received more report of missing miners from their families,” Mr Chen said. Only four workers escaped from the privately-run mine, Xinhua said.

“They are still trying to pump the water out but there is still a large amount of water underground,” the local official in Huanghuai township near Xining city said. The water accumulated underground had reached between 15 million and 20 million cubic metres.

“Objectively speaking, it’s very, very difficult to pump out all the water because more water is gushing in as some is pumped out,” said the official.

“The miners are located 480 metres underground. The water level is already higher than that. The survival chances are slim.”

More than 600 rescuers were mobilized in search of the miners, although rescue operations remained difficult because experts could not locate where the water was coming from.

Mines in the area around Xining city were ordered to close after an accident last month. Shortly after the accident, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao urged local officials to ‘take substantial steps and spare no efforts’ to save the trapped miners.—AFP