A two-week effort to rescue nine miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in east China's Jiangxi Province ended on Tuesday, with the miners declared dead.

Rescuers failed to find the miners' bodies during a search of the shafts where the workers were believed to have been, according to the rescue headquarters.

The rescue workers only found spare working clothes and mining tools.

The nine miners were believed to be either buried under debris from a shaft collapse or swept to the bottom of the mine by the floodwaters, the headquarters said.

The flood occurred around 3:30 AM on October 28 at Lingxian coal mine, a township-owned mine in Le'an County, central Jiangxi, trapping ten people.

One miner, Huang Guigen, 45, was rescued after being trapped for three days in the shaft. Huang was working alone when the flooding occurred, and he was in an area not inundated by the flood.

According to Xu Jianhui, head of Le'an county, the mine will be closed. The owner will pay a total of 280,000 yuan (US$37,500) in compensation to the family of each victim.

The owner has paid out 200,000 yuan per family and the remainder will be paid by Thursday, Xu said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 13, 2007)