Body of another worker recovered at landslide-hit Erzincan mine

ERZİNCAN

Search teams have recovered the lifeless body of another miner more than three months after a landslide at a gold mine in the eastern province of Erzincan, bringing the confirmed death toll to five.

Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar announced the discovery on his social media account, expressing condolences to the worker's family.

Search efforts for the remaining four missing miners are ongoing, with Bayraktar vowing "intensive work will continue until all the buried workers are reached."

The accident at the Çöpler Gold Mine in Erzincan's İliç district occurred when a massive landslide engulfed nine miners.

The landslide, estimated at a staggering 10 million cubic meters, struck the mine on Feb. 13 at around 2:30 p.m. (17:30 GMT). Anagold Mining, the company operating the mine since 2010, reported nine workers trapped beneath the debris. This latest recovery marks the fifth body retrieved, leaving four miners still unaccounted for.

Authorities informed that the soil that slid during the disaster was a cyanide-containing waste generated in the process of extracting gold, adding that the primary cause of the accident was the excessive accumulation of material in the waste storage area and delayed precautions against cracks formed due to capacity overflow in the area.