Ten Chinese miners have been reported dead after another nine more were confirmed dead by state media. There is just one miner still unaccounted for at the site.
The Mayor of Yantai City told state broadcaster CCTV, "From Sunday afternoon to this afternoon, rescue workers have not stopped searching, and found a further nine trapped miners who unfortunately all died."
Chinese rescuers pulled 11 gold miners to safety on Sunday, two weeks after they were trapped by an underground explosion.
Footage showed the first miner to be rescued, a black blindfold across his eyes, as he was lifted out of a shaft in the morning.
The man was extremely weak, CCTV said on the social media site Weibo. Rescue workers wrapped the barely responsive man in a blanket before taking him to hospital by ambulance.
Over the next few hours, 10 men from a different section of the mine, who had been receiving food and supplies from rescue workers since last week, were brought out in batches.
One was injured but several of the others were shown walking, supported by rescuers and wearing black cloth over their eyes, before leaving the site in ambulances.
Twenty-two workers were trapped about 600 metres underground in the Hushan mine by the blast on January 10 in Qixia, a major gold-producing region under the administration of Yantai in coastal Shandong province.
Officials said on Thursday it could take another two weeks to clear “severe blockages” before they could drill shafts to reach the remaining miners, who had been receiving food from the rescue team.
“We made a breakthrough this morning,” chief engineer at the rescue centre, Xiao Wenru, told the Xinhua news agency.
“After clearing these broken, powdery pieces, we found that there were cavities underneath ... our progress accelerated.”
The rescued men were said to be in good physical condition and had been receiving normal food since Saturday, after several days of living off nutrient solutions, Xinhua reported.
China’s mines are among the world’s deadliest. It recorded 573 mine-related deaths in 2020, according to the National Mine Safety Administration.
