Two Bodies of Missing Turkish Miners Found
Rescuers found the bodies of two of the 18 miners who were trapped over a week ago inside a Turkish coal mine that suddenly flooded, officials said on Thursday.
"The intensive efforts that we have undertaken have permitted us to reach the lifeless bodies of two of our worker brothers," Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said in a televised statement.
He added: "We will continue our search... we have discovered the remains of a meal just next to the place where we found the two bodies."
Yildiz has said that with each passing day hopes are waning of finding the miners alive.
The miners were trapped over 300 metres (1,000 feet) below ground on October 28 in a shaft in the Ermenek district in southern Turkey after a sudden flood.
The private company that operates the mine, Has Sekerler, has said the accident was due to an unspecified "natural disaster".
However, a preliminary report from experts says the flood was the result of water that had collected over the course of years in a nearby unused mine shaft.
This accident was the latest to hit the country's disaster-prone mining industry after 301 workers were killed in a coal mine explosion in Soma in May.
Turkey had the highest rate of workplace fatalities in Europe, according to the International Labor Organisation (ILO).
Source: Agence France Presse
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