Death toll rises to 22 in Turkey coal mine explosion
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The number of confirmed dead is twenty-two as rescue services are still searching for unaccounted people under the rubble.
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Death toll rises to 22 in Turkey coal mine explosion.
The Turkish Ministry of Health reported that the death toll from the Amasra coal mine explosion rose to 22. The Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu had confirmed earlier that the death toll from the explosion at the Amasra coal mine in the city of Bartin in northern Turkey rose to fourteen.
"Fourteen people died," Soylu told reporters.
An explosion in a coal mine at 6.15 pm local time today trapped dozens of mine workers, 300 meters below ground and the cause of the explosion is yet to be determined.
According to Haber television, 115 workers were inside the mine when the explosion happened.
#Bartın'ın Amasra ilçesinde maden ocağında 300 metre derinlikte patlama meydana geldi. Olay yerine AFAD, itfaiye ve çok sayıda sağlık ekibi sevk edildi.
— TRT HABER (@trthaber) October 14, 2022
Yer altındaki madencilerin çıkarılması için çalışmalar sürüyor. Patlamanın nedeni henüz bilinmiyor.https://t.co/zeG3SmHKqj pic.twitter.com/UYOTkbWv3S
Earlier, Governor Nurtac Aslan told reporters that forty-four miners are currently trapped at a depth of 300 meters and another five are trapped at 350 meters.
So far, eight have been rescued and emergency services are working on freeing the rest, the governor's office added, with some of the rescue teams coming from neighboring provinces.
Other official sources state that two workers managed to come out alive but injured, while fourteen others were either rescued or came out of the mine on their own.
At least six of the workers were lying “motionless” inside the mine, though it wasn't known whether they were dead or injured.
A similar incident has previously occurred in 2014 when a fire in a coal mine in the town of Soma, western Turkey, caused 301 people to die, the country's worst industrial and human disaster.
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