Eight miners were confirmed dead and seven others were injured when rainstorm-triggered mud-rock flows destroyed their shanties in southwest China's Yunnan Province, local authorities said on Thursday.
Dikes protecting a swollen water pool collapsed in heavy rain at around 1:00 AM on Tuesday near a tungsten mine in Lushui County on the Sino-Myanmar border, causing a landslide and mud-rock flows that drowned at least two shanties where the miners lived.
"None of the miners was native of the county," said Wang Shizong, a senior official in the Lisu Autonomous Prefecture of Nujiang. Lushui is one of the four counties in the prefecture.
Reports of the accident did not reach the prefectural government until Thursday morning, as devastating rain and flood also destroyed communication facilities in some parts of the mountainous Lushui County.
Wang said all the eight dead bodies had been retrieved and the seven injured miners were still being treated. Sources with the hospital said "they were out of danger."
The latest round of geological disasters caused by rainstorms killed 20 people in Yunnan and affected 900,000 in the four days between July 30 and August 2, the local government said.
Across the country, 1,279 people died and 239 went missing in natural disasters in the first seven months of this year, Ministry of Civil Affairs said earlier this week.
(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2007)
