Minister of Work Safety Wang Jun said "several hundred" people are thought buried in the mud and sludge that came cascading down onto the village after a mining waste reservoir burst its banks on Monday, the China Daily reported.

"There is almost no hope of their survival ... they have been buried for three days," the paper quoted Wang as saying, while indicating the death toll could be even higher than foreshadowed by the minister.

The torrent of sludge in Taoshi township, Shanxi province, buried an entire village of 1,000 people, including a market that was packed with people attending a "major fair," the China Daily reported, citing witnesses.

"The market was full of people when the slush flowed in... minutes later only a thick layer of reddish slush could be seen there," the paper said.

Television footage on Thursday showed rescuers clad in orange jump suits wading through mud and searching debris around the marketplace, while bulldozers ploughed through the sludge.

A bag of apples, a solitary mobile phone and a few overturned cars in the streets lay testament to the speed and ferocity of the landslide.

The official death toll rose from 128 to 151 Thursday, with 35 injured.

However, that was based on the number of bodies pulled out of the sludge and authorities could not say what the eventual toll would be.

"At present, we do not know the exact number missing. We must wait until the search operation (leaders) can confirm the number," Wang Qingxia, a local government spokesman, told journalists here in the Xiangfen county seat that oversees the disaster area.

Only 38 of the dead, mostly locals, have been positively identified, the government said, as it announced that relatives of each victim would be paid 200,000 yuan (29,000 dollars) in compensation.

Before being ordered out of the town by police on Wednesday, an AFP reporter saw the market entirely covered by mud, as well as the remains of a buried school.

The mud appeared to be more than six metres (20 feet) deep in some places.

Authorities have prevented foreign media from accessing the village, citing safety concerns, but also seeking to stop the journalists from talking to residents angry over the corruption and mismanagement blamed for the disaster.

China's national work safety administration said an illegal mine above the town had kept the tailing pond full of ore dregs, which burst its banks amid heavy rain and sent sludge into the village.

State media reports said that the mining reservoir was decommissioned in the 1980s, and was put back into use only recently after a new owner took over the mine and restarted iron ore processing.

Police have detained 13 people associated with the illegal mine, including its boss, Zhang Peiliang, 52, local authorities said Thursday.

They added that the mine's safety certification was revoked in 2006.

The Communist Party secretary, the mayor of Taoshi, and two work safety officials have been sacked "for lax work safety supervision and a failure to strictly deal with hidden safety dangers," state press reported earlier.

However authorities have admitted that the conditions that led to the disaster are not a one-off. Up to 9,000 industrial tailing ponds exist in China with many of them posing hidden dangers, the work safety body said.

Last year, over 6,000 people died in China's accident-plagued mining industry, with about 3,800 of the fatalities coming in coal mining, according to official figures.

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
A world of storm and tempest
When the Earth Quakes

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News