TAIYUAN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Two miners have died but rescuers have saved six others trapped on Monday in a midnight flood in a coal mine in north China's Shanxi Province, sources with the local safety watchdog said Thursday.

The accident occurred at the village-run Muwagou Coal Mine in Xiangning County in Linfen in the very early hours of Monday morning. Thirteen miners were working underground, and five managed to escape, an official with the provincial coal mine safety supervision bureau said.

Rescuers managed to pull out six survivors but two others have been confirmed dead, he said.

Investigators said the mine held a valid production permit and business license, but its safety license had expired. An investigation of the accident is underway.

Linfen, a city with more than 400 mines, suffered three deadly mine disasters last month in which 32 people were killed. Twenty-six miners died in a gas explosion at Yujialing Mine in Yaodu district on March 28. The local government has sacked 35 officials over the three accidents.

In another coal mine blast which occurred on April 19 in the Dashucun Coal Mine in north China's Hebei Province, 16 miners have been confirmed dead and rescuers are still searching for another missing miner.

Coal mine accidents killed 4,746 people in China in 2006.

The rate of fatalities per ton of coal mined in 2005 in China was 70 times worse than in the United States and seven times higher than in Russia and India.

China is determined to reduce the death rate to 2.1 for every million tons of coal produced by 2010, down from 2.81 in 2005.