Rescue work after a China coal mine blast that took 104 lives has been completed, state media said Saturday, indicating rescuers had given up hope of finding at least 16 miners still missing.
"Rescue operations are basically finished, with 104 bodies recovered from the 120 or more who were missing," Xinhua news agency reported, citing the local rescue headquarters.
The report offered no further details on the suspected fate of those still missing or a final death toll.
The gas explosion occurred late Wednesday night in the colliery in Hongdong county in northern Shanxi province, the latest horrific accident to highlight poor conditions in China's coal mining industry.
State media said Saturday about 50 of the dead or missing were off-duty miners sent below ground in a bungled rescue effort by mine managers who hoped to avoid reporting the incident to authorities, the West China City Daily reported Saturday.
"We didn't know anything about conditions down there," the paper, based in the southwestern city of Chengdu, quoted miner Zhao Jinsheng as saying.
Zhao said his brother Zhao Jinhai remained among the missing.
A government mine-safety spokeswoman told AFP earlier that management failed to report the accident for more than five hours while sending in their own teams, which were not properly trained for rescue work.
Official media have blamed the explosion on the mine's bosses, saying they allowed mining in an unauthorised area of the site to extract more coal than their licence allowed.
Police have detained 33 people over the accident and formally arrested five, state media have said.
Xinhua said the mine's manager Gao Jianmin and its legal representative, Wang Hongliang, were among those detained and that the mine company's bank accounts had been frozen.
China's coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world, with safety standards often ignored in the quest for profits amid sky-rocketing Chinese demand for coal, source of about 70 percent of China's energy.
