QUETTA, July 30 (Reuters) – At least eight coal miners were killed and dozens still missing after an explosion buried parts of a mining complex in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Thursday, an official said.
Muhammad Atif, the Chief Inspector of Mines in the province, said 36 people were in the collapsed part of the complex at the time of the explosion.
Of them, 28 were still missing late on Thursday night, with rescue efforts ongoing at a depth of 4,000 feet (1,219 metres), Atif told Reuters. “We are hopeful to find some miners alive, but chances are low,” he said.
Abdul Ghani Baloch, a senior government mining official in the region, told Reuters that “two mines close to each other were damaged in a powerful methane gas explosion.”
The incident occurred in Sorange, a remote area near the provincial capital Quetta.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta, editing by Rick Noack and Susan Fenton)
