The death toll from one of China's biggest mining disasters in recent years neared 150 Tuesday, as angry relatives of the victims blamed the state-run mine's management for ignoring safety standards.
With just three miners unaccounted for, Xinhua news agency said the number of miners confirmed dead from the Sunday night cave-in at the state-run Dongfeng coal mine in the north-east province of Heilongjiang was 148.
The central government's safety watchdog, the State Administration for Work Safety, had a lower death toll on Tuesday evening of 140.
However it said there were 11 miners still missing underground, meaning the final tally could be 151.
Another 72 miners had been rescued, the watchdog and Xinhua said.
As rescue efforts continued for those still missing, the victims' relatives expressed anger and frustration at the Dongfeng mine's management for consistently ignoring safety concerns and exploiting the workers.
"They all knew there were safety problems but they wouldn't do anything about it," a woman surnamed Ge, who was waiting outside the mine on Monday night to hear news of two of her relatives, told AFP.
Ge said miners had in the past threatened to strike unless the poor safety standards were improved but the management had rejected their demands.
At the local hospital, a woman surnamed Song said Tuesday that the management had taken advantage of the desperation of the impoverished people in the area.
"It's all because they needed the money," she said of the workers who went down the pit despite the dangers as she sat by her 18-year-old nephew who was hauled out of the mine alive.
Qitaihe city, where the mine is located, is a bleak coal mining area with virtually no other industry. It is less than 200 kilometres (125 miles) from Siberia.
"It's the officials who should have died, not the people who went down the shaft," Song said, adding workers received between 400 and 1,000 yuan (49 and 123 dollars) a month for their labours.
The wife of Ning Wenzhou, a miner who perished in the disaster, also said management ignored safety warnings in the days leading up to the explosion.
"I heard that around the 20th (November) the gas was already above safe levels and the alarm was going off but no one did anything about it," Wu Fenghua said.
State-run mining conglomerate Heilongjiang Longmei Group, one of the biggest coal producers in China with an output of 27 million tonnes of coal in the first half of this year, owns the Dongfeng mine.