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Rescue workers rushed Wednesday to find survivors buried when a huge torrent of mining waste and sludge engulfed this small Chinese town, as the official death toll doubled to 128.
An unknown number were still missing in Taoshi after a mining dam collapsed, but a resident and some sections of China's state-run press warned that hundreds may have perished.
"One hundred and twenty-eight bodies have been found and 35 people have been injured," the state-run CCTV network said in its nightly news broadcast.
The government had earlier put the death toll at 56 in the disaster in northern China's Shanxi province.
Before being ordered out of the town by police and government officials, an AFP reporter saw the remains of a buried school, a market entirely covered by mud and the wreckage of a few cars that had been hauled out of the muck.
The mud appeared to be more than six meters (20 feet) deep in some places.
While residents said there were likely no students at the school when the tragedy occurred about 8:00 am on Monday, there were fears for teachers living there as well as stall owners and shoppers at the market.
"Normally there will be 3,000 to 4,000 people in the market... there may have been less at that time (on Monday morning), but surely there were several hundred people," a 46-year-old woman said as she stood in the mud.
The woman's brother was working at the market when the sludge came pouring into town, and she has not seen him since.
CCTV quoted a joint statement attributed to President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao ordering an "all-out" emergency response and rapid investigation.
"We must quickly find out the reason for the accident, catch those responsible according to law, absorb the disaster's lessons, and strengthen our management of work safety," it said.
China's work safety administration has blamed an illegal mine operating on a mountain above the town. Police have detained nine of its employees, including the company boss.
The administration said the mine had kept a tailing pond full of ore dregs, which burst its banks amid heavy rain and sent sludge cascading down into Taoshi, a small township of just over 20,000 residents.
The river of mud swallowed up an area of the town several hundred meters wide and several kilometers long.
The Communist Party secretary, the mayor of Taoshi, and two work safety officials were sacked "for lax work safety supervision and a failure to strictly deal with hidden safety dangers," state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The work safety administration said rescue work had been stepped up on Wednesday, with 1,550 people involved in the hunt for survivors and victims.
Heavy machinery including bulldozers was being used in the rescue effort, it said.
China's state-run press said it was as yet impossible to determine how many people had died because rescue work was ongoing, adding there were many unregistered migrant laborers from other parts of the country in Taoshi.
However it also appeared that the government was trying to strictly control the flow of information.
Many major newspapers, including Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, did not report the latest news. Others, such as the Beijing Youth Daily, only carried two paragraphs on the disaster.
Most of the reports seen in Chinese dailies were largely taken from Xinhua reports.
Meanwhile, foreign reporters were not allowed to enter Taoshi. The AFP reporter arrived when it was still dark on Wednesday morning and stayed for one hour before being ordered out.
PHOTO CAPTION
A destroyed vehicle lies half-buried in mud at Taoshi township, a small mining town in Shanxi province.
AFP
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