Tibetan rescue teams are searching for 83 miners buried in a landslide in Maizhokunggar county on Friday.
The chances of finding survivors at the mine near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, were slim, Chinese media quoted rescuers as saying.
The miners’ camp, at an altitude of 15,000 ft, 45 miles east of Lhasa, was destroyed by thousands of tonnes of rock.
Tibetan rescue teams are searching for 83 miners buried in a landslide in Maizhokunggar county
Rescuers have been hampered by freezing weather, altitude sickness and risks of further landslides.
Xinhua news agency said that as of 10:00 local time no survivors had been found.
“The miners’ survival chances were slim due to the scale of the landslide,” it quoted one rescue worker as saying.
Some 2,000 police, firefighters and doctors have been sent to the disaster site, setting up temporary accommodation at a safe distance. About 200 bulldozers have been deployed to shift rock.
Xinhua said cracks on nearby mountains suggested there could be further land slips.
“Temperatures as low as -3C have affected the sniffer dogs’ sense of smell,” it added.
More than 300,000 cubic meters of debris had been removed by midday on Saturday.
The Maizhokunggar mine, which produces copper, as well as some silver and gold, is operated by a subsidiary of state-owned China National Gold Group, China’s biggest gold producer.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is said to have ordered authorities to “spare no efforts” in the rescue operation.
Most of the workers were ethnic Han Chinese from Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, with two reported to be ethnic Tibetans.
Police said the area that collapsed was up to 1.5 sq miles.
Chinese officials believe the Tibetan plateau has huge resources, including millions of tonnes of copper, lead, zinc and iron ore.
Critics claim that Beijing’s interests are driven by a desire to exploit the region’s rich mineral wealth.
The government argues its investment brings modernization and better living standards for local Tibetans.
The landslip came on the same day as a gas explosion at a coal mine in north-eastern Jilin province.
Some 28 people were killed at the Babao mine in the city of Baishan.
Another 13 miners were rescued after the explosion.
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50 miners have been trapped in a coal mine in the city of Sanmenxia in Henan province, China, after a “rock burst”, according to officials.
Four miners were killed and fifty more are missing after the accident, which happened late on Thursday in the city of Sanmenxia.
Chinese media reported that the rock burst – an explosion caused by the sudden release of built-up pressure – happened shortly after an earthquake.
Reports said that hundreds of Chinese miners die every year in pit accidents.
The industry is one of the most dangerous in the world, and is notorious for its lax safety standards.
Earlier this week a gas explosion at a mine in neighbouring Hunan province killed 29 people.
50 miners have been trapped in a coal mine in the city of Sanmenxia in Henan province, China, after a "rock burst
However, Chinese officials insist the country’s record is improving, and say they have taken action by closing many illegal mines.
A spokesman for the state-run Yima Coal Group, which runs the Sanmenxia mine, told the AFP news agency an “intense search” was going on for the missing miners.
Local safety officials said 75 miners had been working in the pit at the time of the explosion.
14 miners had managed to escape and other four had been confirmed killed.
Seven injured miners were brought to the surface earlier on Friday as rescuers continued to those left trapped by the rock blast that occurred on Thursday evening, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Six had minor injuries but one was seriously hurt. At least 200 workers were digging a small rescue tunnel about 1,650 feet deep to try to reach the trapped miners, the People’s Daily newspaper’s website said. The structural status of the mine and the conditions of the miners were not known.
The Qianqiu Coal Mine belongs to Yima Coal Group, a large state-owned coal company in Henan, the State Administration of Work Safety said on its website.
Luo Lin, the head of China’s State Administration of Work Safety, said a magnitude 2.9 earthquake occurred near the mine shortly before the “rock burst” was reported.
The phenomenon occurs when settling earth bears down on mine walls and cause a sudden, catastrophic release of stored energy. The exploding chunks of coal and rock, or the shock waves alone, can be lethal.
The survival of the trapped miners depends on the intensity of the rock explosion and the rescuers’ ability to provide ventilation to them, a local official told The Associated Press.
