18 people are still trapped underground in China following the collapse of a gold mine on Saturday (December 24th) in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, in the west of the country. Twenty-two miners were able to get out, help is at work.
With our correspondent in Beijing, Stephane Lagarde
The families of the buried miners and the rescuers hope for one thing: that the entire ceiling of the mine has not collapsed and that there are still air pockets. Currently, the priority is to restore communication with the missing by means of boreholes and, possibly, in a second step, to send them the necessary care and supplies.
40 people were underground at the time of the accident on Christmas Eve, around midday. Located about forty kilometers from Yining Township, near the Borohoroshan Mountains, the Axi mine is one of the main gold deposits in China.
Regular accidents
A rescue headquarters has been set up, according to the emergency department of the Kazakh autonomous prefecture of Illi where the operation is located, which carries out both the extraction, selection and smelting of the precious metal.
Safety standards have improved in recent years in China, but accidents still happen regularly. In January 2021, 10 miners were killed in the collapse of the Qixia gold mine in the eastern province of Shandong. In September of the same year, 19 charcoal burners were found dead after a long search in Qinghai province (northwest).