The Thai government has extended an overnight curfew for three days as security in Bangkok remains uncertain after the army broke up an anti-government protest camp. The city has set about cleaning up from the months of protests and nearly a week of street violence.

City workers using bulldozers and trucks Thursday set about clearing away the debris left after the Thai army shut down the red-shirt protest camp in Bangkok's center.

Workers dismantled the protesters' barricades of rubber tires and bamboo poles near the start of Silom Road, the city's financial district.

Pratsarn, a supervisor from the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority, says it will take at least two days to clear the area, in part because the army must make it safe. He says the army gave the clearance for the cleanup crews after checking for unexploded materials.

Many of the red-shirt leaders had surrendered by Thursday, and urged their supporters to go home, but some protesters refused and resisted efforts to capture them.

The army reported small pockets of fighting in Bangkok Thursday, as it hunted down resisters. But overall, the city was calm, a day after the army used armoured personnel carriers to push into the protest camp at Rajaprasong, an upscale shopping and residential district.

At least nine people died during the operation, bringing the death toll to more than 70 since the protests began in mid-March.

Satish Sehgal is a Bangkok publisher who lives near the Bon Kai area, which saw intense fighting Wednesday. He says security in Bon Kai remains uncertain, so roads have not re-opened, because some red shirts remain active in the area.

"I believe [authorities] are only waiting to clear the area in Bon Kai because apparently some activists and some terrorists are still hidden in different buildings around that area," he said. "The army is still looking for weapons and explosives down Rajadamri Road. But other than that it is only matter of time that things get back to normal."

The government has extended the overnight curfew it imposed Wednesday on Bangkok and more than 20 other provinces for three more nights.

The red shirts, many of whom support former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, had demanded that the government resign. They said they were denied their votes when Mr. Thaksin as ousted in a coup in 2006 and subsequent, elected, pro-Thaksin governments were removed by court rulings.

Mr. Thaksin, who lives overseas to avoid a prison sentence for corruption, warned the army crackdown may trigger violence elsewhere in the country. He has called for outside mediation to resolve the crisis, which the government rejects.

The government says Mr. Thaksin helped orchestrate the protests, a charge he denies.

MOSCOW - Rescue workers raced to save 59 people trapped inside Russia's largest coal mine on Monday as the death toll from twin underground explosions rose to 31.

The death toll at the Raspadskaya coal mine, 3,000 km east of Moscow, rose from 12 overnight as more bodies were found following two methane explosions on Saturday, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement.

Aman Tuleyev, governor of Kemerovo region where the mine is located, said time was now running out to rescue those trapped in areas of the mine where anti-flooding systems had failed.

"God willing, they are still alive," he said in remarks shown on Russian television. "That possibility still exists, but ... we only have 48 hours until it floods."

The death toll makes the disaster the deadliest in a Russian mine since May 2007, when 39 died as a result of a methane explosion at Yubileynaya mine, also located in Kemerovo.

More than 350 miners were underground when the first explosion rocked the Raspadskaya mine just before midnight on Saturday. Nearly 300 miners managed to escape.

"We felt the wave: dust, gas and hot air," one unnamed miner told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio station. "We were blocked from both sides but we got out through the emergency exit."

Dozens of relatives gathered in a building nearby, many hugging each other and some crying as they waited for news.

Her voice breaking, one woman, Alexandra Onishchenko, said she was beginning to lose hope that her son was still alive.

"What grounds blast."

A criminal investigation has been opened into possible safety violations, the Prosecutor General's Office said.

"We need to do everything possible to save the people," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a video conference with rescue leaders on Sunday.

RISING FLOOD WATERS

At Raspadskaya, the country's biggest underground mine, rising flood waters were complicating the efforts of more than 500 people involved in rescue work on Monday, officials said.

Nineteen rescuers were themselves trapped underground after a second blast four hours later reduced several buildings to smouldering ruins and forced a halt to rescue work.

The bodies of 17 rescuers were found after a fall in methane levels allowed colleagues to re-enter the mine. Sixty-five were injured, the Emergencies Ministry said.

Every hour 2,000 cubic meters of water were pouring into two areas of the mine where at least 13 people were trapped, news agencies quoted Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying.

Rescuers restored electricity to the ventilation system, but faced the threat that higher levels of oxygen in the mine would increase the risk of another explosion, Shoigu said.

Raspadskaya is part-owned by steel-and-mining firm Evraz Group. The mine in the city of Mezhdurechensk had reserves of some 450 million tons of coal and produced 8.9 million tons in 2007, according to the Raspadskaya company. It says the pit is the largest underground mine in Russia.

Emergency workers in western China are struggling against freezing cold and altitude sickness in the search for more survivors of this week's powerful earthquake that killed at least 760 people and left thousands homeless

Using their bare hands and shovels, rescuers continued Thursday to claw through the rubble of buildings that collapsed in a powerful earthquake in Qinghai Province.

The death toll is expected to rise with hundreds more still believed to buried under collapsed mud and wood structures. The quake, which struck the mainly Tibetan region early Wednesday, is the deadliest in China in almost two years.

Photographs of the victims are emerging and they show many school children among the dead.

State media reports say 66 pupils and 10 teachers have been killed and dozens of grieving parents are waiting for news near ruined schools.

Thousands of people spent the night out in the open wrapped in blankets against the below freezing temperatures.

Zou Ming is the Ministry of Civil Affairs' disaster relief head. He says medical aid, food and shelter are the top priority for the 100,000 people living in the quake zone.

Zou says a huge relief effort to send tents and medical equipment is under way.

He says soldiers and medical teams have been dispatched.

Doctors who have reached the worst affected areas in Yushu County - where 85 percent of buildings have been destroyed - have rigged makeshift hospitals.

But they say the region's high altitude hampers rescue and aid workers. At high altitudes, there is less oxygen in the air, and people from lower regions often have problems coping.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is to visit the area late Thursday. He and President Hu Jintao have called for an all-out rescue effort to reach the disaster zone on the Tibetan plateau known as the "Roof of the World".

The United States said it is "ready to assist" if China requests international aid.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama offered prayers for those who died while Pope Benedict called for "solidarity" with the victims.

The 6.9 quake and a score of aftershocks were centered in the mountains that divide Qinghai province from the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Some of the scenes are a reminiscent of those seen after the May 2008 earthquake that claimed more than 70,000 lives in neighboring Sichuan Province. Among the victims were thousands of school children killed when their schools crumbled in the quake.

Accusations that the schools were poorly built are still a source of controversy in China.