BEIJING — Six workers have died helping to build venues for this summer’s Olympic Games, including two who worked at Beijing’s celebrated “Bird’s Nest” stadium, a top work-safety official said yesterday.

The announcement followed a British news report last week that alleged a cover-up over worker fatalities at Olympics sites.

That report accused site managers and police of ordering construction teams to remain silent about incidents in which workers plummeted to their deaths from the capital’s National Stadium, an intricate steel-laced structure that resembles a bird’s nest.

Chinese authorities denied 10 workers had died, as the January 20 story in London’s Sunday Times alleged, but promised an investigation.

Yesterday, the deputy chief of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Work Safety, Ding Zhenkuan, told reporters that there had been two workplace deaths at the National Stadium, one in 2006 and one in 2007. He said there had been six workplace deaths in total but did not provide details.

“We have properly compensated the families, reported the accidents to the construction community, and seriously punished those responsible,” Mr. Ding said.

About 17,000 workers have been building more than 30 competition venues for the Olympics, which are to begin August 8. Most are migrant workers who form an essential but sometimes overlooked underclass in China’s cities. They work menial jobs for long hours often based only on verbal promises that they will be paid.

While fatalities are not unusual in stadium construction, more than 100,000 Chinese die in workplace accidents each year, often after businesses overwork employees or dispense with safety precautions. High-profile accidents have alarmed the Communist Party; last week, senior government officials asked the public and press to help expose cases in which local officials or businesses take bribes or otherwise cut corners on workplace safety.

China is under intense international scrutiny ahead of the games, and activists defending everything from labor rights to the environment are using the two-week event as an opportunity to pressure the Communist Party.

Yesterday, the Free Tibet Campaign said Prince Charles had informed the group that he would decline any invitations to the games. Neither the group nor the Prince of Wales offered any explanation for the decision, but Charles is a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing regards as an irritant because of his efforts to promote greater autonomy for Tibet.

In Beijing, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, Wang Hui, said she had not heard the report on Charles but that Chinese authorities “consider any boycotts of the Olympic Games to be unfair.”

Prime Minister Brown of Britain and President Bush have both said they will attend the games.

[Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reported that hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded by freak weather across China during the country’s lunar new year celebrations, the busiest travel week of the year.

Railway stations were crammed with people yesterday, as the worst cold and snow to hit central, southern and eastern China in 50 years took its toll on already congested transport systems.

More than 100 million people, including students and migrant workers, travel home every year to celebrate the new year. For many, it is their one chance in 12 months to see their wives and children.

But by nightfall, there were reports of 200,000 people stranded at Guangzhou station alone. Police were called out to keep order, while the authorities struggled to find food and places for those affected to sleep.

The weather has also hit coal deliveries to power stations, with Prime Minister Wen announcing emergency measures to ensure supplies, including the banning of exports.]