Six people, four of them teenagers, died after a bomb being built by a junior high school gang exploded accidentally in southern China, the state-run China Daily said today.

More than 70 miners have been killed in a south China tin mine that flooded, the Communist Party’s leading newspaper confirmed today, after days of official denials.

An official Chinese Web site today said a flood in a mine killed about 400 people, even as local officials continued to deny any deaths.

The death toll in China from Typhoon Utor has risen to 23 as hundreds of thousands of people battle against floods.

A tropical storm killed three people in China as it swept through the province of Guangdong, wiping out 4,700 homes and causing more than £1bn damage.