Rescue teams were trying in the evening of Friday to save several dozen workers blocked in galleries located 300 and 350 meters below sea level.
Le Monde with AFP
At least twenty-five workers were killed, and twenty-eight others injured in an explosion on Friday October 14 in the amasra coal mine, a city located on the coast of the Black Sea, in the North- West of Turkey, said,
The explosion occurred at 6:15 p.m. local time (5:15 p.m. Paris time). Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that he was canceling his program to go to the accident location on Saturday. “Our wish is that loss of life are not higher and that our minors can be saved safe and sound,” he tweeted.
Rescue teams were trying to save the workers blocked in galleries in the evening located 300 and 350 meters below sea level. They would be forty-nine still prisoners under the ground, according to Mr. Soyu Who specified that 110 minors were there at the time of the explosion.
Rescue teams and medical teams, as well as family members of blocked minors, many of whom had tears in the eyes, were at the entrance to the mine, according to the first images disseminated by the Turkish media.
A probable gray stroke
“According to the first observations, this is a stroke of the gray,” said Turkish Minister for Energy Fatih Donmez. AFAD, the Turkish Public Public Management of Disaster, had initially announced on Twitter that a defective transformer was at the origin of the explosion, before retracting.
“I don’t know what happened. There was sudden pressure and I couldn’t see anything,” said the Anadolu news agency, a minor who could Exit unscathed from the galleries on his own.
“Almost half of the workers have been evacuated. Most of them are fine, but there are also serious injuries,” said the mayor of Amasra, Recai çakir, to the Turkish channel Turkish Ntv.
Work accidents are frequent in Turkey, where the strong economic development of the past decade has often been at the expense of safety rules, especially in the construction and mining sectors.
The country had suddenly became aware of it during an accident in Soma in 2014: 301 minors had been killed in a coal mine, after an explosion and a fire which had caused the collapse of a wells.