ZHENGZHO -- Fifteen miners were confirmed dead in 
a flooded coal mine in central China's Henan Province, rescuers said late 
Saturday. 
Rescuers recovered 14 bodies of the miners late Saturday 
evening who were trapped at the flooded Shangjiuwu coal mine in Ruzhou city, 
southwest of the provincial capital Zhengzhou. 
 
 
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    Coalminers gather at the colliery as rescue work continues 
 after a flooding in the mine in Ruzhou, central China's Henan Province, 
 March 24. [Xinhua]
  
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A high density of gas and lack of oxygen led to the deaths, according to Li 
Jiucheng, director of Henan Coal Mine Safety Administration. 
The accident occurred around 11 p.m. Thursday when 52 miners were working 
inside the mine. 
Mine managers organized rescue operation themselves without reporting the 
accident immediately to local work safety administration authorities. 
The local government received a report of the accident from local residents 
Friday morning and began organizing rescue operations. 
The privately-owned mine had been upgrading production facilities before the 
accident. It had won government approval to raise its annual capacity from 
90,000 tonnes to 150,000 tonnes. 
Police have detained mine owner Wang Xianguo and are searching for the other 
two runaway mangers. 
The bank account of the mine was also frozen. 
The cause of the flood is being investigated. 
In a separate accident, a gas blast last Sunday killed 21 miners at a coal 
mine in north China's Shanxi Province, a major coal production base in the 
country. 
China's coal mine accidents killed 4,746 people in 2006, according to the 
State Administration of Work Safety.