UPDATE Subway Collapse... 17 Missing

Update 11/17/2008 0548 PST

BEIJING (AFP) – The death toll from a subway tunnel collapse in eastern China rose to seven on Monday, with authorities warning 14 other people trapped underground were likely dead, state press said.

Rescuers found the bodies of four more victims late Sunday and Monday following intense searching in the wreckage of the tunnel that was under construction in Hangzhou city, state radio reported.

Most of the missing were believed to be construction workers whose bodies were likely buried underneath mounds of mud, the report said.

Altogether 75 metres (250 feet) of the tunnel collapsed on Saturday, creating a huge crater that trapped 11 vehicles, including at least one bus, and which flooded with water from a nearby river, it said.

Most of the water was pumped out of the crater on Monday, reports said.

"There is (only) a slim chance of the survival of the trapped workers because of heavy flooding in the crater," Xinhua news agency quoted Wang Guangrong, a spokesman for the local government, as saying.

Rescue workers on Sunday pulled out all the vehicles and brought drivers and passengers to safety, according to Xinhua.

It said that 26 people injured in the mishap had been taken to hospital, with 11 of them released by Sunday.

Hangzhou started construction of a major subway network in March last year.

State press described the accident as one of the worst in the history of subway construction in China.

Update 2232 PST

Beijing police have detained 10 people after a subway tunnel collapsed on Wednesday morning trapping six workers.

Rescue work was still underway at the Haidian district of Beijing, but rescue officials held out little hope that the workers could be able to survive the accident.

Those detained include the supervisor and the designers of the tunnel but the labor contractor, Zhou Yongfu, has disappeared, the Beijing Times reports on Friday.

The collapse occurred at 9:20 a.m. Wednesday, but the construction company -- China Railway 12th Bureau Group Co. -- failed to report the accident to municipal authorities and instead tried to rescue the trapped workers on its own.

The management of the project ordered all the workers to stay at the construction site and told them not to talk to media and police. They confiscated mobile phones from workers.

The Beijing municipal authority apparently learned of the accident at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, almost eight hours after the accident occurred, from an unidentified source.

Workers' anger was palpable. Signs showing the construction company's logo were defaced at the construction site.

Update 2215 PST

The official Xinhua News Agency said at least 50 workers were working underground at the time. A total of 26 workers were rescued and sent to a hospital for treatment, it said. Xinhua said four were dead and 17 missing, and did not account for the three additional workers.

Last year, four construction workers were killed when a subway line being built for this year's Beijing Olympics caved in. Two months later, another accident at a subway construction site in the eastern city of Nanjing killed two workers.

BEIJING (AP) - Rescue workers in eastern China are searching for 17 workers who are missing after a subway tunnel they were building caved in.

The official Xinhua (shin-wah) News Agency reports a 250-foot-wide section of road over the construction site collapsed Saturday, trapping workers and creating a huge crater into which at least 11 vehicles plunged.

Xinhua says rescuers are pumping out water that seeped into the tunnel from a nearby river.

Four bodies had been recovered as of late Sunday. Those missing are believed to be construction workers.

Poor construction quality is a chronic problem in China and is often blamed on bad planning, shoddy work and theft of materials.