Eight miners have been missing since midnight following a flood in colliery in Linfen, a major coal production base in north China's Shanxi Province, the local safety watchdog confirmed on Monday.

The accident occurred at the village-run Muwagou Coal Mine in Xiangning County at around 0:00 AM on Monday, said a source with the provincial coal mine safety supervision bureau.

The flood trapped 13 miners, but five managed to escape, he said.

Investigators said the mine held a valid production permit and business license, but its safety license had expired.

Rescue work is going on and investigators have yet to determine the cause of the accident.

Linfen, a city with more than 400 mines, suffered three deadly mine disasters last month in which 32 people were killed. Twenty-six miners died in a gas explosion at Yujialing Mine in Yaodu district on March 28. The local government has sacked 35 officials over the three accidents.

Coal mine accidents killed 4,746 people in China in 2006.

China is determined to reduce the death rate to 2.1 for every million tons of coal produced by 2010, down from 2.81 in 2005.

The rate of fatalities per tons of coal mined in 2005 in China was 70 times worse than in the United States and seven times higher than in Russia and India.

(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2007)