Seven men drown in an abandoned mine on the Youyang-Xiushan line, and police hold 21

Police in Youyang Tujia and Miao autonomous county said on Monday night that seven people had drowned inside a closed, abandoned mine near the boundary with neighbouring Xiushan, after rain sent water into the shaft where they were working. The county public security bureau said it had already arrested 21 people suspected of illegal mining.

Xinhua, quoting the bureau's evening bulletin, reported that officers received a call from residents on Saturday, 3 October, saying people were missing at the sealed shaft. The search that followed turned into a criminal case. Inside the mine, officers found seven bodies. A first reading of the scene, the bureau said, is that the men drowned when rainfall caused a sudden rise of water while they were taking ore from a pit that was supposed to be shut.

The mine sits on the line between two autonomous counties in southeastern Chongqing, both named for the Tujia and Miao populations that live there. Youyang and Xiushan are hill counties, not the riverfront city most outsiders picture when they hear Chongqing. Abandoned shafts in that karst country hold rain poorly. A blocked adit can fill in minutes once surface water finds a way down.

The bureau did not name the dead, did not give ages, and did not say what mineral the group was after. It also did not say whether any of the 21 people in custody were at the shaft when the water rose, or whether they were picked up later in the search. The bulletin said the case was still under investigation and that those responsible would be pursued under the law.

Illegal mining is a recurring police file in the southwest. Closed pits keep their value if the seam is still there and the guards are not. A crew can reopen a shaft with hand tools, work at night, and move ore out on small trucks before a county office notices. The Youyang bulletin is unusual in one respect: the deaths and the arrests were announced together, and the police framed the drowning as a consequence of the theft rather than as a standalone accident.

China Daily, carrying the same Xinhua copy on Tuesday morning Beijing time, used the word drowned and placed the shaft near the county boundary. Neither outlet quoted a local government statement beyond the police. No figure was given for how long the mine had been sealed, who held the old licence, or whether the county had posted guards. Those gaps matter for any later charge of negligence against a company or a local office, and they are not in the public bulletin.

The timing is narrow. The missing-person call came on Saturday. The arrests and the recovery of the bodies were disclosed on Monday evening. That is a short window for a flooded underground search, which usually means the water either drained or the bodies were close to the entrance. The bulletin does not say which.

Chongqing municipality has spent years closing small mines after a series of gas and flood deaths in private pits. A closed shaft is not a safe shaft. Timber rots, pumps are pulled out, and the first heavy rain of autumn finds the old workings. The Youyang case adds a criminal count to that physical fact: the people inside were not a licensed crew on a shift. They were, on the police account, taking ore from a pit the state had already shut.

What happens next is a prosecution file, not a rescue. Twenty-one people are in custody. Seven families, still unnamed in the official text, have bodies to claim. The shaft remains a crime scene and a flooded hole on a county line that most maps mark only as a boundary.