Eleven miners were rescued Sunday after being trapped underground for two weeks after an explosion at a gold mine in Shandong Province in China's east, Xinhua News Agency reports.

Rescuers lifted the workers from the mine between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. China time (03:00 GMT) Sunday. State broadcaster CCTV showed workers being hauled up one-by-one in baskets.

Twenty-two miners were trapped underground after the explosion Jan. 10.

While one of the miners still trapped is believed to have died the others are in good physical and psychological condition.

"For days we took turns to clear the debris in the shaft. Today, we finally got the result we had hoped for," said one of the rescuers.

Experts said the rescue was a surprise because late last week they had said it would take at least 15 days to reach the trapped workers. "The obstacles are just too huge, which means we need a least another 15 days or even more to reach the miners," Gong Haitao, deputy director of the local publicity department, said then.

Xiao Wenru, chief engineer of the mine rescue center of the Ministry of Emergency Management said finding a space "greatly expedited the rescue process." More than 600 rescuers are working round the clock.

Authorities have detained mine managers for delaying reporting the accident. The cause of the accident is under investigation but the explosion was large enough to release 70 tons of debris that blocked the shaft, disabling elevators and trapping the workers.

China's mine industry has a poor safety record with accidents common occurrence and regulations often weakly imposed.

In September, 16 workers died at a mine on the outskirts of Chongqing because of a carbon monoxide leak.

In December 2019, an explosion at a coal mine in Guizhou province killed at least 14 miners.