Rescuers blasted and dug through mud and debris today to try to reach 27 miners trapped hundreds of feet below ground after a landslide buried the iron ore plant in which they worked in southwestern China.

Authorities believe that the miners could still be alive and for a second day have used controlled explosions to try to ease their digging, China Central Television, the state broadcaster, said.

Twenty-six people died in Friday’s landslide Wulong county, an area rich in natural resrouces, 90 miles (150km) from Chongqing city, where industrial accidents are common. The dead were 19 miners and seven workers at a nearby mobile phone company, CCTV said yesterday.

The landslide blocked the two entrances to the Jiwei Mountain iron ore mine and buried several homes near by.

An official of the the Wulong county Communist Party, who gave only her surname, Zhu, told The Associated Press today that 72 people were missing, including the trapped miners. It was unclear whether that number included the deaths already reported by CCTV.

Eight people were pulled out of the mine late on Friday, three of them seriously injured.

The Xinhua news agency said that the trapped miners were about 490ft-60ft (150m-200m) below ground and authorities estimated that the air and water supply in the mine could support them for five to seven days.

Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, and Wen Jiabao, the Premier, ordered local authorities to spare no efforts to save those buried, the Xinhua said.

More than 500 rescuers were searching for survivors and plans were under way to drill a 130ft-deep hole to give the miners air and to send down water and food. Rescuers were also digging a channel to relieve a barrier lake that formed when the landslide blocked a river, CCTV said.

An official with the Chongqing work safety supervision bureau, who gave only his surname, Dong because he was not authorised to speak to themedia, told the Associated Press that the landslide did not appear to be related to mining activities. Experts were investigating the cause, Xinhua said.

China’s vice-premier in charge of industrial policies, Zhang Dejiang, had inspected the rescue work yesterday and urged precautions against secondary disasters, it said.

A landslide last year killed at least 277 people when a holding reservoir burst and a valley in Shanxi province in northern China was unundated with mud and iron-mining waste.

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