An explosion ripped through a coal mine in northwest Turkey, killing 17 workers, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said.
Forty seven citizens were working 80 meters below ground in that mine. Unfortunately 17 people died and 30 have been under treatment in hospitals, Erdogan said. Authorities ended search and rescue efforts about five hours after the explosion took place in the mine near the town of Dursunbey in the Balikesir province. Twentyeight workers were pulled out of the rubble alive, Balikesir Governor Yilmaz Arslan said, according to the state-run Anatolian Agency. The bodies of 12 miners were pulled from the rubble while five workers died in the hospital. Eighteen miners are being treated in hospitals around the city. Dursunbey was the site of a 2006 disaster in which 17 miners were killed. The latest explosion comes two months after 19 workers died when a coal mine near the city of Bursa collapsed after a dynamite explosion. Mining disasters are common in Turkey. The worst disaster, at Zonguldak on the Black Sea, in 1992 killed 263 workers.
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