Our Correspondent Quetta
Six miners have been killed in a blast at a coal mine in Marwar in the province of Balochistan, officials with the provincial Directorate of Mines told media.
They were among eight miners trapped about 1,000 feet underground when accumulating methane gas exploded at the coal field, the officials said.
“Six bodies have been retrieved by the rescue team from the affected mine this morning,” a senior official of the Directorate of Mines said.
“(The) mine has been closed and an inquiry has been ordered by the Chief Inspector of Mines into the incident.”
In the past year, 102 coal miners were killed in Balochistan in 72 different incidents, Sultan Muhammad Lala, president of the Balochistan Coal Mines Workers Federation said.
Lala said the government and mine owners were not ensuring safe working conditions at the sites.
An explosion caused by methane gas at another coal mine in Marwar in May 2018 had killed 20 workers. In August that year, another methane-fueled explosion in the city of Quetta killed seven.
