ANKARA: Hundreds of rescuers on Tuesday raced to dig out 30 miners trapped underground after a powerful gas explosion triggered a cave-in at a coal mine in northern Turkey.
Rescuers started to remove the earth and rock blocking access to the trapped workers early Tuesday after pumping air into the mine overnight to reduce dangerous levels of carbon monoxide and methane inside, Labor Minister Omer Dincer said in televised remarks.
"We do not know how long it will take us to reach the workers because we do not know the size of the cave-in," he said, adding that they had not yet established contact with the workers.
"But, we still have hope. We have heard that there are areas inside unaffected by methane. We hope our workers are there," Dincer said.
Some 400 rescuers were involved in the operation, he added.
The miners were trapped at a depth of 540 meters in the state-run Karadon mine in the Black Sea province of Zonguldak after a powerful explosion on Monday that officials said had been triggered by methane.
The workers were extending the gallery at the time of the explosion, a process that calls for the use of dynamite, officials said, but it was not clear whether the workers had used explosives on Monday.
Officials initially tried to send rescue teams down the main mine shaft only to find that it had been extensively damaged by the explosion.
The rescue was then shifted to another shaft some 2,000 meters from the site of the explosion, forcing rescuers to travel that distance through an underground tunnel.
Energy Mininster Taner Yildiz said it was not immediately clear how many cave-ins there were along the tunnel extending to the area where the trapped workers are.
"It is difficult to say at the moment whether it will take us three hours or three days to reach the workers. We have no idea how much of the gallery was destroyed and how much was left standing after the explosion," he said.
Explosions and cave-ins are common in Turkey, particularly in private mines where respect for safety regulations is often minimal.
Thirteen workers were killed in February when a methane explosion at a mine in northwest Turkey caused a cave in. In December, 19 workers died in a collapse set off by an explosion.
The worst mining accident happened in 1992 when 263 workers were killed in a gas explosion in a mine in Zonguldak where the current rescue operation is under way.
