Eight miners were confirmed dead and seven others went missing
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.
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)
