AMASRA, TURKEY: Rescuers on Saturday searched for the last miner missing at a coal mine in northern Türkiye, where a methane blast the previous day killed at least 40 people in one of the country’s worst industrial accidents in years.
The blast ripped through the mine near the small coal mining town of Amasra on Türkiye’s Black Sea coast shortly before sunset on Friday. “We are approaching the end of the rescue operation,” a tearful Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said at the scene on Saturday.
“The search continues for the sole person whose fate is unknown,” he said, adding that the fire that had broken out in the tunnels following the blast was now mostly under control. Updating the death toll, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said: “We have counted 40 dead in total. 58 miners were able to be rescued, either by themselves or thanks to rescuers.”
He said 28 people had been injured as a result of the blast.
Soylu had said earlier some 110 people had been underground at the time of the explosion.
Television images late on Friday showed anxious crowds — some with tears in their eyes — congregating around a damaged white building near the entrance to the pit in search of news of their friends and loved ones.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was due to fly to the scene of the accident on Saturday, vowed on Twitter that the incident will be thoroughly investigated. Most initial information about those trapped inside was coming from workers who had managed to climb out relatively unharmed.
But Amasra mayor Recai Cakir said many of those who survived had suffered “serious injuries”.
Turkey’s Maden Is mining workers’ union attributed the blast to a build-up of methane gas.
But other officials said it was premature to draw definitive conclusions over the cause of the accident.
