Nineteen workers have died after they were swept away by the tide while working on a seaweed farm in east China's Jiangsu Province, rescuers said on Tuesday.

Twenty-one workers took three tractors to tend a laver plantation near Hezao Village, Changsha Town, Rudong County, on Sunday afternoon while the tide was out, rescuers said.

The sea started to come back in the early evening and by midnight it reached about seven meters high, but the workers failed to escape and were swept away, rescuers said.

Local authorities mobilized thousands of people and hundreds of tractors and boats to search for the missing workers.

Only two men were rescued, and by Tuesday rescuers had recovered the bodies of three men and 16 women.

(Xinhua News Agency April 18, 2007)