Dead and injured in a coal mine explosion in Turkey
The authorities in Turkey announced that 28 people were killed in an explosion at a coal mine in the north of the country.
The accident took place in the Amasra region, on the Black Sea coast.
Health Minister Fakhruddin Qugha said rescue teams had succeeded in rescuing 11 people. It is believed that dozens are trapped underground, hundreds of meters deep, amid attempts by rescue teams to get them out.
The authorities have not yet established the cause of this explosion.
Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said, “We are facing a very unfortunate situation. In total, there were 110 of our brothers working (underground), some of them went out without assistance while others were rescued,” in statements to the media before boarding the plane heading to Amasra.
Television footage showed crowds of anxious-looking people – some shedding tears – gathering around a damaged white building near the entrance to the pit, hoping for information regarding their loved ones and friends.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit the site of the accident later today.
Initial information regarding the accident came from workers who managed to crawl out of the mine without suffering serious injuries.
Rajai Jakir, the mayor of Amasra, said many of the survivors of the blast at the mine were “seriously injured”.
The explosion occurred on Friday evening, which led to the start of rescue work at nightfall.
It is believed that the reason behind the explosion may be the accumulation of methane gas “for an unknown reason”.
Nearby villages sent reinforcements to the rescue teams. Television footage showed paramedics providing oxygen to survivors of the accident.
Jakir said that 70 rescuers managed to descend to a point at a depth of 250 meters from the shaft, but it is not yet clear whether rescue teams can reach depths that bring them closer to the stranded workers, and there is no information regarding the obstacles that may prevent them from reaching them.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had opened an official investigation into the circumstances of the explosion.
It is noteworthy that Turkey witnessed the largest disaster in its history in the coal mining sector in 2014, when 301 miners were killed in an explosion in a mine in the city of Soma.
