Thirty farmer workers were helped out and 15 of them were confirmed dead in the shelf collapse accident that happened at a storage Wednesday morning in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province.

The wounded were under emergency treatment in hospital and the local authority was probing into the case.

The storage's owner surnamed Zhang was held in custody by local police, said Yao Daixian, deputy chief director of the rescue operation.

Some 30 farmer workers were stacking flower stalk of garlic onto the shelves at about 11:30 am in the Chenzhai Cold Storage in Zhengzhou City. The shelves, with more than ten meters high, collapsed and the workers were buried.

The rescuers carefully cut and removed the shelves in case there were still alive buried people, which more or less affected the rescue process, said Zhengzhou's mayor Wang Wenchao.

(Sources including China Daily and Xinhua News Agency May 6, 2004)