The death toll from a mine collapse in China's Inner Mongolia province now stands at four, six are injured and 49 people remain trapped since Wednesday. A new landslide in the last few hours has forced a halt to search and rescue efforts, state media reported.
The Chinese government has mobilized 900 people to try to get the missing people out of the mine. President Xi Jinping called for all efforts to find the trapped people and help the families of the victims, as well as a thorough investigation into the causes of the accident, the Global Times newspaper reported.
A mine worker said that most of the trapped people are excavator and truck drivers, and that drones are being used to estimate the exact size of the collapsed area. "I had just started my working day when I noticed rocks falling from the mountain," a hospitalized miner told state-run CCTV. "I saw that the situation was getting more and more serious and an evacuation was organized, but it was too late, the mountain just collapsed."
The event occurred after the collapse of at least 400 meters of surface area on Wednesday afternoon in an open-cast mine in the Alxa region. According to different local media, the coal mine had been sanctioned for accessing a water intake without the required permits, in addition to not placing the relevant warning signs in the area. It had suspended its production for three years before restarting it in April 2021.
Coal wells - a material with which China generates around 60% of its energy - continue to register a high accident rate in the Asian country, although in recent years the number of fatal accidents has decreased significantly. Inner Mongolia is the country's main coal-producing region.
In March last year, fourteen miners who were trapped for more than a week after an accident at a coal mine in southern China were found dead by rescue teams.
