Mine Officials Detained After Landslide

XIANGFEN, China (AP) -- Authorities have detained 13 officials of a mine whose dump site collapsed to trigger a landslide that blanketed a village and killed at least 178 people in northern China, state media said Friday.

The death toll could still rise as rescue workers comb through 74 acres of sludge and mining waste covering the area, where hundreds more people could be buried. The workers have covered about 90 percent of the area, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the rescue headquarters.

The landslide Monday in Shanxi province's Xiangfen county was triggered when the retaining wall of a mining dump containing tons of liquid iron-ore waste collapsed, inundating the village of 1,300 residents and an outdoor market with hundreds of patrons in a matter of minutes.

A total of 13 officials from the Tashan Mining Co., which ran the illegal mine, have been taken into police custody, including the chairman of the company's board of directors, the mine owner, the deputy mine chief, and company accountants, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

In addition, the Taosi township's party secretary and governor, and the Xiangfen County's work safety bureau chief and chief engineer were suspended, it said.

Authorities have recovered 178 bodies, but have refused to give an estimate for the number of people missing. Thirty-six people were injured.

Earlier in the week, government officials were quoted in state media saying hundreds could be dead but later denied making those statements.

Hundreds of people are believed to be missing, but calculating the numbers were particularly difficult because most of the mine workers were migrants from elsewhere in Shanxi, or from Chongqing and central Hubei province.

Wang Qingxian, the Communist Party secretary-general for Shanxi province, denied that hundreds of people are missing, saying the exact figure is unknown, but he promised timely updates on the number of casualties, according to the official China Daily on Friday.

Police and government workers are going door-to-door in nearby villages where some of the workers lived to determine who was missing, he was quoted as saying.

Wang said rescue efforts involving more than 2,500 emergency rescue workers and 100 excavators could be finished within three to five days if the weather holds.

Provincial officials said families would be paid $29,300 in compensation for each person killed, China Daily said.

Access to the rescue site has been blocked off by police. One of the victims' family members told The Associated Press that local leaders are not reporting the real numbers of those killed, saying that it could be more than 800 people dead.

Another young woman, surnamed Ye, said she had lost nine family members who were living in town when the landslide occurred. Rescuers have only recovered five bodies, she said, crying bitterly as her mother's body was brought out Friday.

The inundated village of Yunhe had about 1,300 residents, mostly farmers who also supplemented their income by providing transport to nearby mines, according to a local government Web site's description of the place.

Many of the patrons of the outdoor market were migrant workers from the mine and residents of neighboring villages, with many buying food for a mid-autumn holiday, state media reported.

All that was left after the mudslide were a handful of two-story buildings on the fringe of the sludge, which spanned an area the size of four football fields.

The disaster underscores two major public safety concerns in China: the failure to enforce protective measures in the country's notoriously deadly mines, and the unsound state of many of its bridges, dams and other aging infrastructure.