Rescuers yesterday retrieved three more bodies from a collapsed subway tunnel in Beijing that buried six workers when the accident occurred on Wednesday.

The body of the first victim was recovered on Friday. Rescuers have also located the two remaining workers, who are feared dead.

Municipal government officials said that rescue work had been delayed by the company's cover-up attempts and the complicated underground conditions.

In addition, there are concerns that another collapse could occur at any time, which would put the rescuers themselves in danger.

An earlier report said the collapsed section of the tunnel covered an area of about 20 square meters and was about 11 meters underground.

The collapse happened at 9:30 am on Wednesday at a construction site for the No 10 Subway Line in Haidian Nanlu Road between the third and fourth northern ring roads in the city's Haidian District.

One of the six workers came from Central China's Henan Province and the other five are from Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The first body was pulled out on Friday afternoon after more than 50 hours of excavation. The victim was confirmed to be 20-year-old Li Peng from Henan.

Family members of the six workers are now in Beijing.

Local police have detained 10 people over the cave-in, including the works supervisor and the tunnel designers. The labor contractor, Zhou Yongfu, is reported to have fled.

The construction company - China Railway 12th Bureau Group Co - failed to report the accident to municipal authorities in time when the collapse occurred.

In an attempted cover-up, project managers ordered all the workers to stay at the construction site and told them not to talk to the media or police. They also confiscated the workers' mobile phones.

The Beijing municipal authority finally learned of the accident at 5:00 pm on Wednesday, almost eight hours after it happened, when a worker from Henan called Henan police.

In the wake of accident, the Ministry of Construction yesterday issued a statement over the weekend, ordering an immediate safety check for the subway under construction or in operation to weed out any potential safety loopholes.

Source: China Daily-Xinhua