Mexico, May 05: The death toll from a huge gas explosion in a coal mine in northern Mexico that led to the entrapment of 14 coal miners have soared to five with nine others still missing.
Mexican rescuers on Wednesday found 5 bodies, and the chances that the remaining 9 miners trapped about 60 meters underground are still alive are slim to none, but the rescue efforts continue, Xinhua news agency quoted Mexico’s Labor Minister Javier Lozano as saying.
The explosion occurred in the recently opened mine at 8:00 am (1300 GMT) on Tuesday and left the workers trapped some 50 meters underground on the site in Coahuila state, some 135 kilometers south of the US- Mexican border.
Mexican officials had been hoping for a Chilean-style miracle rescue, like that of the 33 miners who survived 69 days underground following the August 5 collapse of the San Jose mine in Chile and were rescued in October.
Lozano said Mexico had asked Chile for help, and that four experts were expected to arrive shortly.
Meanwhile, Mexican President Felipe Calderon issued a statement, expressing his condolences to the victims’ families.
According to Mexico’s national mining union, the “conditions in which the coal mines in the country are being operated are totally unsafe, and especially in this region” where the accident took place.
A similar blast caused by methane gas in Mexico killed 65 miners in February 2006 at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in San Juan de Sabinas, near where Tuesday’s explosion occurred.
Rescuers eventually recovered the bodies of two miners from the 2006 blast but tons of wood, rock and metal, as well as toxic gas, prevented the recovery of the others.
——-Agencies