A fire at a Turkish coal mine has killed 157 people, a local official said, as emergency services battled to rescue hundreds more miners trapped underground.
The death toll in the western town of Soma has reached 157, according to Cengiz Ergun, mayor of the nearby city of Manisa, who spoke in a live interview with CNN Turk television. Emergency services had earlier confirmed at least 17 deaths, according to Hurriyet newspaper. Hundreds more are still trapped, Ergun said.
The mine is owned by Soma Komur Isletmeleri AS, part of the Soma Group. The company said in an e-mailed statement that an explosion at a power distribution unit started the blaze, and the cause of the accident is under investigation. The company’s officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Soma’s website says that it’s the largest underground coal producer in Turkey, and has interests in real estate including an Istanbul office tower. The company says it produces 250,000 tons of coal a month from the Soma field, which is mostly sold to a local power plant.
Turkey’s Labor Ministry said the mine has been regularly inspected and no violation of safety regulations was observed in the latest inspection less than a month ago, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Safety conditions at the mines in Soma were discussed in Turkey’s parliament as recently as last month, Hurriyet cited Ozgur Ozel, a Republican People’s Party lawmaker, as saying. He said a proposal for an inquiry, backed by his party and other opposition groups, was rejected.
“As Manisa’s members of parliament, we’re sick of going to miners’ funerals,” Ozel said, according to Hurriyet.
More than 100 miners have been killed in accidents in Turkey since 2003, according to Anadolu. The country’s worst mine accident occurred in 1992, when 263 miners were killed in a gas explosion in Kozlu in the northwest.
In March, a group of eight labor and professional organizations published a statement saying that Turkey had the worst record for workplace accidents in Europe, with an average of three workers killed every day, according to Turkiye newspaper.
To contact the reporter on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net Ben Holland, Ana Monteiro
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