Bodies of miners trapped in Turkey’s Zonguldak retrieved after more than 30 hours

ZONGULDAK

AA photo

Search and rescue teams early on June 1 retrieved the bodies of two workers from a collapsed coal mine in the Black Sea province of Zonguldak after more than 30 hours, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. 

The collapse occurred in a mine run by a private firm in Zonguldak’s Kilimli district at 8:30 p.m. on May 30. 

Tayfun Keskin, 34, and Volkan Köroğlu, 32, were trapped after the mine’s roof collapsed 600 meters away from the mine’s entrance.  

The rescue teams reportedly reached to the body Köroğlu first, 31 hours after the mine collapse. They reached the body of Kesin three hours later. 

The workers’ bodies were then taken to the mortuary at the Zonguldak Atatürk State Hospital. 

Accidents have beset Turkey’s mining industry in recent years, with 301 coal miners killed in Soma in May 2014 in the country’s worst ever industrial accident.  

In October 2014, 18 died in a flood at a coal mine in Ermenek in 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.