Two workers killed under rubble after Zonguldak mine collapse

ISTANBUL

Two trapped mine workers have died, while a third managed to escape, after a coal mine collapsed on Nov. 27 in the Kilimli district of Zonguldak province, in Turkey’s Black Sea region. 

The two miners who died in the collapse were identified as İsa Çeltik and Cafer Tepebaşı, Doğan News Agency reported.

Accidents have beset Turkey’s mining industry in the recent years, with the most devastating incident being the death of 301 coal miners in the western district of Soma in May 2014, considered the country’s worst ever industrial accident.

On Oct. 18, seven workers were killed in a mine collapse in Şırnak in Turkey's southeast. 

On May 30, a collapse occurred in a mine run by a private firm in the Black Sea province of Zonguldak’s Kilimli district.

On June 1, search and rescue teams retrieved the bodies of two workers from a collapsed coal mine in Zonguldak after more than 30 hours, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

In October 2014, 18 miners died in a flood at a coal mine in the Ermenek district of the Central Anatolian province of Karaman.

In November 2016, 16 workers were killed in a copper mine landslide in the Şirvan district of the southeastern province of Siirt.

Turkey's Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources stopped the activities of 1,780 mines since August 2017 as it has increased inspections of the mines with a new model, which is adopted in August, the Ministry announced on Nov. 18.