China detains 10 over Beijing subway tunnel cave-in

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have detained 10 people in connection with the collapse of a Beijing subway tunnel being built for the 2008 Olympics that killed six workers, Xinhua news agency said in a report seen on Sunday.

The accident happened on Wednesday morning, but the construction company failed to report it for nearly eight hours and instead tried to rescue the trapped workers on its own.

Project managers also ordered workers not to talk to media or police and confiscated their mobile phones, the report said, adding the project supervisor and tunnel designers were among those detained.

The bodies of three of the workers had been brought to the surface, but rescuers were still struggling to recover the bodies of the remaining three, who were trapped under layers of earth and concrete, the People's Daily newspaper reported.

The 25-km (15-mile) line has reported several accidents in past.

In June, two people were killed in a collapse and in January last year a section of highway running past Beijing's central business district caved in, rupturing a sewage pipe and flooding a subway construction site.

Beijing is planning to add 84 km of new subway lines in time for the Games in August next year to improve transport in the notoriously traffic-snarled city.