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 Monday.

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 Jan. 20 story in London’s Sunday Times alleged, but promised an investigation.

On Monday, Ding Zhenkuan, deputy chief of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Work Safety, 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,” Ding said.

About 17,000 workers have been building more than 30 competition venues for the Olympics, which are to begin Aug. 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. 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.

On Monday, the Free Tibet Campaign said that 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.

Wang Hui, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, said authorities “consider any boycotts of the Olympic Games to be unfair.”