About 120 workers are still thought to be trapped in a coal mine in western Turkey where a collapse killed 238 miners in one of the country’s worst industrial disasters, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan said yesterday.
Erdogan arrived to inspect the site in the town of Soma in Manisa Province where an electrical fault caused an explosion the previous day, leading parts of the mine to collapse. Most of the deaths have been caused by carbon monoxide poisoning and three days of national mourning have been declared.
Meanwhile, Turkish police fired tear gas and water cannons at around 800 protesters in Ankara who accused the government and the mining industry of negligence.
Photo: EPA
The protesters, mostly students, hurled stones at the police and shouted anti-government slogans as they tried to march to the Turkish Ministry of Energy, a reporter said.
Fires and toxic gases were complicating the rescue efforts of 400 rescue workers, said Turkish Minister of Energy Taner Yildiz said.
“I must say that our hopes about rescue efforts inside [the mine] are fading,” he added.
The miners are all thought to have gas masks, but it was not clear how long they would last.
Earlier reports said 787 workers were underground when the blast occurred. Yildiz said 363 had been saved as of early yesterday.
Only a handful of miners were seen pulled from the collapsed mine in the morning, many of them already dead, a reporter said.
As victims were taken away on stretchers, friends and relative desperate for news of their loved ones tried to pull away the sheets covering their corpses.
Harun Unzar, a colleague of the missing miners said he had lost a friend previously, “but this is enormous.”
“All the victims are our friends,” he said as he wept.
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
CHINA POLICY: At the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China, the two sides issued strong support for Taiwan and condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea The US and EU issued a joint statement on Wednesday supporting Taiwan’s international participation, notably omitting the “one China” policy in a departure from previous similar statements, following high-level talks on China and the Indo-Pacific region. The statement also urged China to show restraint in the Taiwan Strait. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and European External Action Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino cochaired the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China and the sixth US-EU Indo-Pacific Consultations from Monday to Tuesday. Since the Indo-Pacific consultations were launched in 2021, references to the “one China” policy have appeared in every statement apart from the
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from