- Another 11 miners are hospitalized, five of them in serious condition, and at least one worker is still missing.
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| Medical personnel carry a person injured in an explosion at a coal mine in Bartin, Turkey. |
Death toll from coal mine explosion in northern Turkey rises to 40
At least 40 people have died and another 11 have been injured by the explosion that affected a coal mine in the Turkish province of Bartin, in the north of the country, on Friday, according to a new balance of victims released this Saturday by the Government.
"We have reached 40 deaths now. Despite the fire [in the mine], the rescue teams managed to get another 40 miners out with great sacrifice," Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters.
In total, 11 miners are still hospitalized, five of them in serious condition, while at least one worker is still missing.
"Eleven injured are in hospitals, six of them in the Çam Sakura clinic in Istanbul. The situation is not clear with a miner. Search and rescue works continue until his situation has been clarified," explained the Turkish minister.
Mustafa Turan, head of the burn unit at Çam Sakura Hospital in Istanbul, explained that they received six injured via air ambulances and that one of the injured had to undergo emergency surgery.
"Five men are in the burn unit and their condition is serious," the doctor said.
A total of 110 miners were in the Amasra mine, in the province of Bartin, at the time of the explosion, which for reasons still unknown happened at 3:15 p.m. GMT (4:15 p.m. Spanish time) at a depth of 300 meters.
The president himself, the conservative Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced on the social network Twitter that he will travel to the accident site today to "coordinate search and rescue work."
Meanwhile, the local Prosecutor's Office has appointed three prosecutors to investigate the cause of the incident.
The Turkish Minister of Energy, Fatih Dönmez, who also went to Amasra last night, told the media that according to the first investigations, the disaster was caused by a firedamp explosion. "There are several partial landslides," explained Dönmez,
"We don't know anything. There was dust and smoke, and we couldn't see what happened. I got out by myself. Those of us who were a little far away just felt the pressure of the explosion, but we couldn't see anything," a miner told NTV. who got out of the well before rescue teams arrived.
The damaged mine belongs to the state-owned Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises.
According to the Turkish newspaper Evrensel, a report from the Court of Auditors already indicated in 2019 that gas leaks with the risk of the explosion were being registered in this well.
Turkey is one of the countries in the world with the most accidents in its coal and lignite mines, which the unions blame on poor safety measures in a poorly regulated and controlled sector.
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