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Turkey mine explosion: four dead and 300 trapped in Soma facility Turkey mine explosion: 17 dead and 200 trapped in Soma facility
(about 3 hours later)
An explosion and fire in a coal mine in western Turkey killed at least four miners on Tuesday and may have trapped as many as 300 more, officials said. Disaster teams in Turkey have launched a massive rescue operation at a coal mine in the town of Soma, after an explosion and a fire on Tuesday killed 17 people and left another 200 more trapped underground.
The blast at the mine in Soma, around 120 km (75 miles) northeast of the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, happened during a change in shifts, leading to uncertainty over the exact number of workers still inside, labour union officials said. A power distribution unit exploded on Tuesday afternoon at a mine in the town 250km (155 miles) south of the capital Istanbul, local official Mehmet Bahattin Atci told reporters.
“They are pumping oxygen into the mine, but the fire is still burning. They say it is an electrical fault but it could be that coal is burning as well,” Tamer Kucukgencay, chairman of the regional labour union, told Reuters by telephone. The blast triggered an electricity outage, making the elevators unusable and leaving hundreds of workers stranded underground.
Television footage showed dozens of fellow workers and family members gathering outside the hospital in Soma, a coal mining community in Turkey's western province of Manisa. Around 20 people have so far been rescued from the site, 11 with injuries, Turkey’s disaster and emergency management agency also said about 20 people had been rescued from the site so far, 11 of them with injuries.
Local member of parliament Muzaffer Yurttas told broadcaster CNN Turk that four people had been killed and 20 others taken to hospital, retracting his earlier statement that 20 people had been killed. But death toll is expected to rise, with disaster agency workers trying to organise a cold air depot on Tuesday evening to temporarily store dead bodies.
Nurettin Akcul, head of the Turkish Mineworkers' Union, said five workers had been killed in the blast, which he said happened around 2 km (1.2 miles) below ground. The exact number of people trapped is yet unknown, as the blast occurred as workers changed their shifts.
Energy Minister Taner Yildiz confirmed that a fire had been triggered by an electrical fault and that workers had been killed, but declined to say how many. Atci had initially said the incident had left between 200 and 300 miners underground, but the figure was later revised to “more than 200 workers.”
Mehmet Bahattin Atci, mayor of Soma, said 200-300 workers were still inside following the explosion. The head of the local fire service also told Turkish television that around 300 workers were still trapped. “Evacuation efforts are underway. I hope that we are able to rescue them,” the country’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in televised comments.
Reuters Miners gather at the scene of an explosion (Getty Images) In an attempt to help trapped miners survive, rescuers pumped fresh air underground, while rescue teams from neighbouring areas were rushed in to help rescue efforts, according to Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, who immediately went to Soma to oversee the rescue operation.
“It is a serious accident,” he told reporters.
“Our priority is to reach our miner brothers," he said, adding: "any figure we give could well be wrong."
However, the rescue effort was being hampered by the fact that the mine was made up of tunnels that were kilometers (miles) long, said Cengiz Ergun, the leader of Manisa province, where the town is located.
“The situation inside is troubling,” Ergun told NTV television.
Families wait outside the mine (Getty Images) Meanwhile, hundreds of people had gathered outside the mine and the local hospital in Soma, in the hope that they would hear some news of their loved ones.
SOMA Komur Isletmeleri A.S., which owns the mine, confirmed that a number of its workers were killed but would not give a specific figure. It said the accident occurred despite the “highest safety measures and constant controls” and added that an investigation was being launched.
“Our main priority is to get our workers out so that they may be reunited with their loved ones,” the company said in a statement.
Mining accidents are common in Turkey, where poor safety conditions in some facilities can put workers at risk.
Turkey's worst mining disaster was a 1992 gas explosion that killed 263 workers near the Black Sea port of Zonguldak.
Additional reporting by agencies