Rescue teams pulled two more bodies from the rubble of China 's worst coal mine disaster in years but were struggling today to reach 82 miners still trapped. The gas explosion is known to have killed 66.
Anxious relatives crowded outside the Daping mine in central Henan province but officials held out scant hope of finding anyone alive.
The blast on Wednesday caused part of the mine's roof to collapse. It was one of three mining disasters to hit the country that day.
President Hu Jintao had called for answers, the People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said in a front-page article.
China has the world's biggest and most dangerous coal mine industry that has expanded without regulation to fuel the fastest economic growth of any major economy.
More than 4,000 people work at the Daping mine and scores of employees and their families live nearby and have relatives among the missing, Xinhua news agency said in a report from the scene.
"This morning I received a phone call. The caller simply asked me to come to Daping. Immediately I sensed a disaster. I hurried here by bike," said the uncle of Li Panren, one of the missing.
Rescuers in orange uniforms hurried to the site and weeping family members watched as bodies wrapped in green canvas sacks were carried away.
But deaths were not confined to the Henan mine.
The China News Service said 29 workers were missing at a coal pit in northern Hebei province after it was flooded on Wednesday. A gas leak in a coal mine killed 12 people in southwestern Chongqing municipality the same day.
And today, a blast at a coal mine in the southwestern province of Guizhou killed five people and left eight missing.
Deaths in China 's coal mine accidents hit 4,153 in the first nine months of this year, down 630 from the same period last year, the State Administration of Work Safety said.
But analysts say the real figure could be higher, with many mine-related deaths going unreported.
All coal mines of the Zhengmei Group, to which the Daping mine belonged, were ordered today to halt production for safety inspections while other coal mines in the province were told to improve safety oversight, Xinhua said.
The state-owned Zhengmei Group produces 6.6 million tons of coal annually, and Xinhua quoted experts as saying the production stoppage would affect supplies to about a dozen power plants.