Sixteen trapped miners in a flooded coal mine in northeast China's Jilin Province had "virtually zero" chance of survival, and rescue work has been suspended, local officials said Monday.

The likelihood of the miners staying alive in a shaft filled with water and mud for ten days were remote, said a penal of coal mine rescue experts who conducted a final search of the Zhonghe Coal Mine in Meihekou City Sunday.

Mixture of mud and water have inundated their working site and blocked up four exits. Gas content in the shaft has reached a deadly level of 2.5 percent, said officials with the Meihekou Municipal Government.

Rescue work was suspended because underground conditions could be life-threatening for rescuers, and any future work would probably lead to secondary disasters, officials said.

The flooding took place at about 1:55 PM on November 28, after a cave-in at the mine, trapping 16 miners underground.

Chi Lide, the only miner who managed to escape, said he saw seven fellow workers buried by mud and sand in a flash.

The cave-in was 12 meters deep and 20 meters in diameter. As of Sunday, rescuers had used excavators and forklifts to fill it with5,300 cubic meters of earth, and pumped 2,666 cubic meters of water out of the mine, officials said.

The rescue work was once halted on November 29, as the site was in danger with a possible new cave-in, rescuers said.

Among the trapped, 15 were local residents of Meihekou City and one native of Dongfeng county of Jilin.

The coal mine was licensed and run by the Zhonghe township with an annual capacity of 60,000 tonnes.

(Xinhua News Agency December 8, 2009)