6 coal miners were trapped in the Marwar area of district Quetta after a methane gas explosion inside a mine. Rescue workers reached after the blast and rescued 4 miners, Mines and Mineral department sources told media.
All the trapped miners have suffered burn injuries due the blast. The injured miners shifted to the burn unit of the Bolan Medical Complex Hospital for medical treatment. “All four admitted to the burn ward”, a doctor in the BMC hospital informed. However, a rescue operation is still underway to recover the remaining two trapped miners.
Where in another news, a coal miner died inside a mine on Sunday afternoon in Dukki district. Levies sources said a landslide hit a coal miner deep inside the mine killing him on the spot. The victim identified as Shams ur Rehman, a resident of the Swat area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The dead body of the victim moved towards his native village from Dukki.
A similar incident occurred in March this year, when eight coal miners were trapped at a depth of 1000 feet inside a coal mine in Marwar. A methane gas leakage had triggered an explosion inside the mine that had brought the entire structure tumbling down. The dead bodies of six of the eight miners were pulled out after a four-hour long rescue operation. The remaining two were never found.
Such dead incidents are not a novelty in the coalfields of Balochistan where the miners lack the necessary equipment, facilities and training required to operate in the extremely dangerous environment of coal mines. Balochistan’s soil is saturated with reserves of natural gas, and a single misplaced pickaxe blow can easily trigger an explosion and kill tens of individuals on the spot.
Over the past year, more than a hundred coal miners have lost their lives in 72 such incidents.