Karachi: Four workers were killed on Saturday after a methane gas explosion in a coal mine near Quetta in Pakistan's Balochistan province, officials said. Seven workers were inside the mine when a methane gas explosion took place deep inside the mine in Sra Ghagai mine area, an official of the Balochistan Coal Mines Workers Federation said.
Four workers were killed, while three others were rescued and sent to hospital as their condition is not good, he said. The official said that gas explosions happen frequently in mines all over the province due to insufficient safety measures by owners and government inspectors.
In many cases like in this incident, some mines are even operated illegally, so there is no record of how many workers are there, the official said. Abdul Ghani, Chief Inspector Mines said the mine was being combed properly to ensure no other workers were trapped there.
According to figures by the Balochistan Minerals Department, there are a total of 2,800 coal mines in the province which employ around 70,000 workers and deadly accidents due to gas explosions and wall collapses inside these mines are common in the coal mine areas of Balochistan. Officials say that thousands of coal mine workers, many of them refugees or migrants from neighbouring Afghanistan and other parts of Pakistan have left work and fled the province following the brutal killing of 11 Hazara coal mine workers by insurgents in the remote Mach area in January last year.
In November, three coal mine workers were killed by unidentified armed men in a remote coal mine area of Harnai known as Sharag.
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