Six workers died during the construction of the venues for this year's Olympic Games, including two in building the showpiece Bird's Nest stadium, a Beijing official said.

A British newspaper article last week accused China of covering up the accidental deaths of at least 10 workers during the construction of the National Stadium.

"There were two deaths in the Bird's Nest, one in 2006 and one in 2007," Ding Zhenkuan, deputy chief of the Beijing Bureau of Work Safety, said.

"We have properly compensated the families, reported the accidents to the construction community and seriously punished those responsible."

Ding later confirmed the death of a further four workers during other construction for the Games, a Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games official said.

There was also one serious injury and three lighter injuries over the five years of construction, Ding said.

Ground was broken on the 91,000-seat stadium in 2003 and it was the only one of the 36 Olympic venues in China not completed by the end of last year.

Beijing vice-mayor Chen Gang said the construction of the 31 venues in the Chinese capital had cost less than 13 billion yuan (£913 million).

The central and local governments had contributed half of the cost of the venues with the remainder coming from other investors and donations.

Scheduled to be completed by the end of March, the Bird's Nest will host the opening and closing ceremonies as well as athletics and soccer at the August 8-24 Games.

The building of any big stadium without a fatality is unusual and at least one worker has died during the construction of each of the main arenas for the last three Summer Games.

In 2007, a total of 101,480 Chinese died in workplace accidents, including 81,649 death from road accidents.

Some 17,000 workers, mainly migrants from poorer provinces surrounding Beijing, were working on the Olympic venues at the height of construction.

Reuters