At least four people were killed and six injured in the collapse of part of a coal pit in Nizhny Novgorod. China yesterday Wednesday, however, the death toll could be much higher as 49 people are still missing.

The landslide interrupted the search operation, the state news agency Xinhua reported today. According to the same source, more than 900 members of the rescue teams were at a coal mine in Alse, a remote area in the western part of Inner Mongolia (north).

“We had no choice but to stop the rescue operation,” an official in charge of coordinating the operation told Chinese state television CCTV.

“Workers and vehicles” were suddenly “buried” Wednesday afternoon when part of a mine owned by the Xinjing Coal Mining Company collapsed, CCTV said.

“I would die too”

Inner Mongolia is the main contributor to China’s coal production. The causes of the tragedy are currently unknown.

A video uploaded to social media and filmed by a coal truck driver shows huge rocks rolling down a hillside, kicking up clouds of dust and crushing cars.

“The whole slope collapsed (…) How many people died?” a male voice is heard in the background. “If I were standing in line there today, I would die too.”

🚨 Gap:

🇨🇳 50 people stranded after mine collapse in China: two dead, reports

A “catastrophic collapse” occurred at a mine in Inner Mongolia on Wednesday, and rescuers are currently working to free the stranded miners. pic.twitter.com/KIJzmsEIaO

— OsintTV📺 (@OsintTV) February 22, 2023

President Xi Jinping last night ordered local authorities to “do everything possible” to find “and rescue the missing,” CCTV reported.

The area where the tragedy took place is sparsely populated and its economy relies heavily on coal mining.

Frequent accidents

Mine safety in China has improved in recent years, as has media coverage of disasters in the sector; in the past, many such tragedies were hushed up.

But accidents in the industry remain frequent due to the inherent danger of this activity, as well as due to improvisations in some cases related to the implementation of labor protection measures.

At the end of December, 40 people were working in the adits of gold mines, when parts of them collapsed in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (northwest). 22 people were rescued.

In December 2021, two workers stranded in a flooded coal mine in Shaanxi province (north) died and 20 others were rescued.

And in September 2021, after a long search, 19 miners were found dead, also stuck in the bowels of the earth in Qinghai province (northwest).

^{Sources: REUTERS, AFP, APE-MPE.}