Turkey: Search operations continue for the trapped mine workers and demands for its closure
For the third day in a row, Turkish rescue teams continued their search for 9 miners trapped after a landslide in a gold mine, in the eastern province of Erzincan, amid calls from unions and non-governmental organizations to close this mine.
A soil slide occurred last Tuesday afternoon, in the mine in the village of Choplar in Ilic district in Erzincan province, trapping 9 underground workers out of 667 workers in the mine, after a soil slide during a mining operation carried out by the Canadian “Anagold Mining” company. .
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a phone call with the governor of Erzincan, Hamza Aydogdu, requested “the mobilization of all resources for ongoing search and rescue efforts,” according to a statement issued by the Turkish presidency.
The Turkish Ministry of Justice announced, in a statement, the opening of a judicial investigation into the incident, and assigned 4 public prosecutors to the case.
The Turkish authorities arrested 8 people, including senior mine officials, as part of the investigation into the disaster, according to what was reported by the official Turkish channel TRT.
A parliamentary committee was also formed, in order to investigate aspects of the incident and determine measures to prevent similar incidents. According to the decision, the committee consists of 22 members, and will work for a period of 3 months.
For its part, the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Administration (AFAD) announced in a statement that 2,722 personnel, 796 vehicles, 99 lighting towers, 52 electrical generators, 7 drones and a Goradar. And 5 ground penetrating radars are working to search for the trapped workers.
The process of searching for missing persons is complex. Due to the presence of cyanide in the ground, which is a highly toxic chemical compound used to extract gold from substrates.
In turn, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerli Kaya revealed that the collapse occurred along a slope about 200 meters high, and that the total volume of the sliding mass of soil was between 9 and 10 million cubic metres.
