ANKARA, Turkey – A coal mine collapsed in northern Turkey on Tuesday, trapping up to nine people inside, an official said.
The accident occurred just months after 301 miners were killed in the country’s worst mining disaster.
Gov. Ali Kaban said the coal mine in Zonguldak, on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, collapsed at around 3 a.m. but authorities were not notified for several hours, delaying the rescue operation. It was not immediately clear what caused the cave-in.
The miners are alive and are trapped in an area close to the mine’s exit, Kaban told the state-run Anadolu Agency, adding that rescuers are hopeful that the miners will be brought out alive soon.
In May, a fire inside a coal mine in Soma, western Turkey, killed 301 people. Turkey’s worst mining disaster, it exposed poor safety standards and superficial government inspections in the country’s mines.
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