Six university students have drowned in an industrial tank while on an educational visit to a mining operation connected to China’s most prestigious gold producing company, according to state news agency Xinhua.
One teacher was also injured in the incident, which occurred on Wednesday morning at China National Gold Group’s Wunugetushan copper-molybdenum mine in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, it said.
The students, from Northeastern University in Liaoning province, drowned after a grating panel gave way. They were pulled from the tank in the mine’s beneficiation plant, but rescue efforts could not revive them, according to Xinhua.
The report did not provide further details on the victims, nor any indication of where responsibility might lie for the accident.
According to the official Jimu News in Wuhan, which published interviews with students from Northeastern University on Thursday, the victims were in their third year and majoring in mineral processing engineering.
