Five miners die in separate collapses in western Turkey

Five miners have died after two separate mine collapses in Turkey, according to local authorities and media reports. The first incident occurred on Thursday at a mine in Soma district in Manisa province, about 100 kilometres northeast of Izmir. Seven workers were caught in the collapse, the governor’s office said.

Rescue teams initially recovered two bodies and took two surviving workers to hospital. Three miners remained trapped underground until their bodies were recovered early on Friday. The governor’s office said the search and rescue operation had ended.

Justice Minister Akin Gurlek ordered an investigation into the incident. Nine company executives, including the manager of the mine’s operator, were detained on suspicion of negligence, according to DHA news agency. A union official told AFP that coal production had been declining while existing areas were being over-exploited.

The official said a new section was under development but was not yet operational, and that financial pressure on management was increasing pressure to speed up the work. In a separate accident on Friday, another miner died when an unlicensed mine collapsed in Kilimli, a town on Turkey’s northwestern Black Sea coast, media reports said. Soma was the scene of Turkey’s deadliest mining disaster in 2014, when 301 miners died from carbon monoxide poisoning after an underground fire triggered by an explosion.