BEIJING (Reuters) - Two Chinese company executives are being investigated over a disaster last month that killed close to 200 miners in one of the worst accidents to hit the country's coal industry, state media reported on Friday.
Zheng Zhenxiu, the chairman of the privately operated Huayuan Mining Co., and company deputy general manager Zhang Canjun face investigation over the flooding of a coal mine shaft in the eastern province of Shandong that trapped 172 miners, Xinhua news agency reported.
Efforts to pump the shaft dry continue, but officials have said there is no hope of finding any survivors. Another nine miners were trapped by flooding in a nearby shaft.
Shandong authorities "are undertaking a comprehensive investigation" into the disaster, said Xinhua.
The report did not explain the nature of the investigation into the two executives or whether they have been arrested.
But the announcement appears to fly in the face of previous official claims that the mine floods were a "natural disaster."
The miners were trapped when a river dyke burst in torrential rain, sending water rushing into two mine shafts.
Relatives of missing miners have bitterly criticized Huayuan, saying that managers failed to act on warnings about flooding and did not move quickly enough to move the miners from rising waters.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in China's coal mines in the first seven months of this year alone, despite repeated government campaigns to clean up the industry that has long been the world's deadliest.
China's death rate from mining accidents was 70 times that of the United States in 2005 and seven times worse than Russia and India, Xinhua has reported.
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