Trapped Chinese miners emerge alive

Two brothers have crawled to safety after being trapped for nearly six days in a Chinese coal mine, state media said today.

Rescuers and their family had given them up for dead after 130 hours underground after a tunnel collapsed, the China Daily said.

Brothers Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou were trapped while working at an illegal mine in Beijing's Fangshan District late on Saturday August 18. Two days later, rescue efforts were called off.

"The miners' families were in despair, burning 'ghost money' for the deceased at the entrance of the mine," the China Daily said.

"The only people who didn't give up were the miners themselves" who started building a tunnel towards the entrance.

The newspaper did not say if any other miners were believed trapped.

On Friday, after 130 hours underground, the two finally saw light.

"After crawling out, they collapsed and were rushed to hospital by miners nearby," the report said.

Doctors said the two, both in their 40s, had lost a lot of weight and their kidneys were damaged due to days without food and water.

China has the world's most dangerous coal-mining industry as mine owners flout safety regulations to meet insatiable demand for a fuel powering the country's booming economy.

A gas explosion in an Inner Mongolian mine that was operating illegally killed seven people on Saturday, as officials began handing compensation to families of 181 miners trapped and presumed dead after a flood last week in eastern China.

No sign of six missing US miners

Mine officials will drill a seventh bore hole into a Utah mine in a continuing effort to find six missing coal miners after the latest effort turned up no sign of the men, officials said today.

The trapped miners have not been heard from since the Crandall Canyon Mine in Huntington, Utah, collapsed on Aug 6, stranding them some 550 metres below the surface.

Rescue crews yesterday drilled from the surface to punch into underground mine chambers for the sixth time since the search began but no signs of life were detected, the federal Mine Safety Health Administration said.

"Unfortunately, bore hole number six did not provide us with conclusive evidence of the fate of the six trapped miners. However, we have identified another location to drill that may provide us additional details as to what may have happened to the miners," MSHA chief Richard Stickler said in a statement.

Searchers plan to lower a robotic camera into the mine to aid in the search, officials said.

Rescuers suspended efforts on August 17 to bore a tunnel to search for the six trapped miners after a cave-in killed three rescue workers involved in the search.