18 killed in colliery collapses in Pakistan

At least 18 people were killed, 13 injured and about a dozen went missing as two coal mines collapsed in different areas of Pakistan's Balochistan on Saturday, media reports said.

According to the reports, the first accident took place when a coal mine collapsed in Pir Ismail, Marwar area near Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan.

Rescue teams of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) and the civil departments and security forces rushed to the site and managed to pull out the bodies of 16 miners, Xinhua reported.

Officials said the death toll might rise as at least five people were trapped under the debris of the collapsed mine.

In a separate accident, a gas blast led to the collapse of a coal mine in Margit area near Quetta, which killed two persons and left 13 others injured. Over a dozen miners were also reported missing after the collapse.

The injured miners were sent to the Margit Hospital. Hospital officials feared the death toll might further rise as the majority of the injured were in critical condition. Four seriously wounded persons were shifted to the Civil Hospital in Quetta.

Most of the labourers in the incident belonged to a village in Shangla district of Pakistan's northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Local media reported that the rescue teams were still searching for the miners who went missing in the two mines.

According to the Pakistan Central Mines Labor Federation, around 200 miners die on average in coal mine accidents in Pakistan every year. At least 11 miners died in two mine-related accidents in different areas of the country last month.

--IANS

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