QUETTA: Rescue teams in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province have retrieved four bodies from a coal mine following a methane gas explosion a day earlier in the Sanjdi coal field, about 40 kilometers from Quetta, which left a dozen miners trapped inside the mine.
According to a senior official of the provincial mining department overseeing the rescue work, the search for the other miners is still ongoing, though he maintained the chances of finding anyone alive were almost negligible.
Rescue teams from the mining department and the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) have been working for the last 19 hours with heavy machinery.
“We have recovered four bodies after nearly 24 hours of the incident,” Abdul Ghani, Chief Inspector Mines Balochistan, told Arab News. “The workers were digging coal 4,000 feet inside the mine, and we have recovered the bodies at 3,000 feet. The search for other workers is still underway.”
Responding to a question, he said the entire mine had caved in due to the intensity of the explosion.
“An excavator from Quetta reached the site at midnight, and we succeeded in opening the mouth of the mine this morning,” he said.
“The mining department will conduct a thorough investigation to assess what kind of safety measures were put in place by the private mine owners,” he added.
Many coal mines in the province are operated by private companies, often under lease agreements with the government.
Ghani said that 11 of the miners were from Shangla, a town in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, while one was a resident of Balochistan.
Mines in Balochistan are known for hazardous working conditions and poor safety standards, where deadly incidents are not uncommon.
According to the provincial mining department, 82 coal miners working on different projects were killed in Balochistan last year in 46 reported mining accidents.
Four bodies recovered from coal mine in Pakistan’s southwest after deadly methane explosion
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Four bodies recovered from coal mine in Pakistan’s southwest after deadly methane explosion
- Twelve coalminers were trapped after the explosion on Thursday, with little chances of finding anyone alive
- Mines in Balochistan are known for hazardous working conditions, where such accidents are not uncommon