A gas monitor's alarm at the coal mine where 83 miners were killed on Monday was ignored for three hours before the natural gas build-up exploded, a State official said on Friday.

What's more, Li Yizhong, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, told a national work safety forum in Beijing that the Shenlong Coal Mine in Fukang, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, did not even have a ventilation shaft.

The monitor showed that the gas density in the tunnel had risen to four times higher than the level that set off the alarm, Li said. But no one paid attention, and miners went underground without taking any safety measures.

"In the final analysis, the tragedy was due to the mine owner's being blinded by profits and trifling with workers' lives," Li said.

The investigation showed that the privately owned coal mine had serious ventilation problems and had no safe production license.

In January, the Xinjiang Administration of Coal Mine Safety rejected the mine's application for a license after detecting 14 safety violations.

Even so, the mine continued to operate and yielded 180,000 tons of coal in the first six months of the year when its designed production capacity called for only 30,000 tons during the entire year.

Li promised that safety investigators will issue their report in three months and bring those who should be blamed to justice.

However, Zhao Tiechui, director of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, also blamed poor enforcement by authorities.

"The local governments' inadequate supervision and the coal mine enterprises' failure to faithfully carry out the safety policies made by the central government may partly account for the situation," he said.

Statistics show that 2,672 people were killed in the first half of this year, a year-on-year growth of 3.3 percent.

The follow-up from the Xinjiang tragedy accompanied news on Friday from south China's Guangdong Province, where rescuers and government officials were still working hard last night to rescue 16 workers trapped in a coal mine in Xingning of Meizhou Municipality.

The accident took place in Luogang Township in eastern part of Guangdong around noon on Thursday when the Fusheng Coal Mine was suddenly flooded. Two workers were immediately rescued.

(China Daily July 16, 2005)