MAt least 14 people have died in a massive explosion at a coal mine in northern Turkey. Another 20 people were injured, three of them life-threatening, as the Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced on Friday evening. The cause of the disaster in the Amasra district on the Black Sea is still unclear. The mine is located about 300 kilometers northeast of the capital Ankara.
Defective current converter as the cause?
According to Soylus, 110 workers were at the mine at the time of the accident, 49 of them in a more vulnerable lower part. Local governor Nurtac Arslan said five people were trapped at a depth of 350 meters and 44 others elsewhere at a depth of 300 meters. Arslan said 14 workers made it out of the mine under their own steam. More than 70 rescue workers penetrated 250 meters deep into the pit. However, the rescue was complicated because of the darkness.
The Turkish miners’ union attributed the explosion to a build-up of methane. The civil protection agency Afad said the explosion was apparently due to a defective transformer.
Television images showed hundreds of people gathered near the pit entrance. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent his interior and energy ministers to the scene of the accident. Local prosecutors said the incident was being treated as an accident and launched an official investigation.
There have been serious mine accidents in Turkey in recent years, partly due to poor safety regulations. In May 2014, Turkey experienced the worst mining accident in its history. 301 miners died in the accident at the mine in Soma in the west of the country. The tragedy sparked protests against the government of then Prime Minister Erdogan.
