Water from a rain-swollen river poured into a coal mine in eastern China, leaving 172 miners trapped and feared dead, government officials and a state news agency reported Saturday. A dike on the Wen river in Shandong province broke at about 2:30 p.m. (0630 GMT) Friday, sending water flooding into the mine run by Huayuan Mining Co. in the city of Xintai, the Xinhua News Agency said. Work areas were submerged and the miners «had only slim chances of survival,» Wang Ziqi, director of Shandong's coal mine safety agency, told Xinhua. There was no indication whether rescuers had any sign that the trapped miners were alive. A total of 756 miners were working underground at the time of the flood and 584 escaped, the report said. About 2,000 soldiers, police and miners were trying to close the 50-meter-wide (175-food-wide) gap in the flood dike, the agency reported. The directors of China's industrial safety and coal mine safety agencies rushed to Xintai from Beijing to oversee rescue work, the report said.
