Officials sacked for hiding 38 deaths at backward Chinese mine

Four officials in Shanxi province were sacked for claiming only four people died in an underground gas explosion that killed 42 miners and injured 21 at the Tianlong mine near Hejin city last December, the official People's Daily said. One of the officials agreed to help a shareholder of the private mine to dispose of the bodies, the newspaper said.

The local government failed to enforce an order to close the "technically backward" mine before the explosion struck, earlier reports said. Two local journalists who tried to investigate the blast were attacked by a group of miners and relatives of the mine manager, who was later detained by police.

Last November state media said some Shanxi officials under-reported 1999 accidents by as much as 85 per cent. Officials in four counties of Shanxi reported only eight accidents and 62 deaths in 1999, but inspectors found 54 accidents and 113 deaths, the Legal Daily said.

The government introduced stricter mining safety standards on December 1 in a bid to reduce such accidents, which kill up to 10,000 miners annually according to official statistics.

(la/dpa)