At least nine miners were killed in a coal mine gas explosion in southwest China's Guizhou Province Wednesday morning, according to local government sources.

The blast occurred at 10:10 am at the Yongliu Colliery, located in Luobie Township of the province's Liupanshui City, said an official with the provincial coal mine administration.

Investigation into the cause of the explosion and rescue work are under way, said the official, who declined to give his name.

The Yongliu Colliery is a legitimately operated coal mine, with an annual capacity of 30,000 tons.

Meanwhile, the last two bodies were found Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning in the flooded coal mine in Yingyang City, central China's Henan Province.

The flooding occurred at 10:00 am on June 2 at Hongxing Coal Mine in Jiayu Town when the miners set off explosives. Eight people were trapped underground. Six bodies were found in the later days of rescue.

The coal mine has been shut down. Compensation is underway.

In Beijing, the 10 workers trapped underground following a coal mine collapse on the outskirts of the city on Sunday remain out of reach, with rescue work still ongoing.

A veteran coal miner told China Daily that the rescue team was unable to reach the trapped people as of press time, which suggested that the fourth rescue plan had fallen through.

Experts had tried three previous projects aimed at pumping oxygen and compressed air into the tunnel, but to no avail.

The workers from the Da'anshan Coal Mine in west Beijing's Fangshan District had been stuck underground for more than 80 hours as of press time.

A report from Xinhua News Agency said the rescue team had encountered unprecedented difficulties during their work.

Experts said that might be because of the complicated geological structure underground hampering rescue efforts.

As many as 10 ambulances and scores of medical workers were waiting outside the mine, and the nearby area has been cordoned off since midnight on Tuesday.

The State-owned coal mine enterprise has ceased production, and all miners are being forced to learn safety measures.

It has been reported that experts had come up with four emergent rescue plans and put them all in operation, but to no avail.

But an unidentified source at the scene said that not all of the relatives of the trapped miners have been informed of the grave situation, in line with a customary practice prevalent in Chinese coal mines.

The practice demands that coal mines do not inform relatives of accidents involving their workers, and they always keep it confidential if the workers remain unscathed.

Those workers who reveal accidents involving their colleagues to others may risk losing their jobs.

However, some relatives who followed their husbands or brothers from their hometown in Southwest China's Sichuan Province to Beijing easily learned about the tragedy when their relatives did not leave work on time.

Most miners in Da'anshan earned 1,000 yuan (US$120) per month and many came from Sichuan Province to work in the mine.

(Xinhua News Agency & China Daily June 10, 2004)