QUETTA: The bodies of only four out of 12 labourers buried under a collapsed coal mine could be recovered by Friday evening, more than 36 hours after the accident.

The miners were trapped at a depth of around 4,000 feet on Thursday after the mine collapsed following an explosion due to the accumulation of methane gas.

The mine, in the Sanjdi coal field area, around 40 kilometres southeast of Quetta, is owned by United Mines Company.

The explosion not only destroyed the mine but also the residential quarters of the workers located outside the mine.

Eight still missing; official rules out possibility of any survivors

The rescue teams have been using bulldozers and other machinery to excavate the site and locate the trapped workers.

“Rescue teams could only recover four bodies from the mine,” Balochistan Chief Inspector of Mines Balochistan Abdul Ghani told Dawn from the spot where he was supervising the rescue operation.

He said the bodies were found at a depth of around 3,000ft and rescue teams were trying to dig down to 4,000ft to look for the remaining miners as they were working at different levels.

He ruled out the chances of finding other miners alive as their recovery would take some time.

The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has also sent a rescue team along with machinery to excavate the site and find an alternative way to enter the mine.

Soon after the explosion, the workers outside the mine started rescue efforts, but couldn’t save their trapped colleagues as debris had closed the mine’s main entrance.

The miners were identified as Roshan Zaib, Amanullah, Waheed Zaman, Nadeemullah, Akbar Ullah, Noman Saeed, Shafiqur Rehman, Azharuddin, Muhammad, Umar Wal, Luqman Zada and Yar Shah.

Eleven of them belonged to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including ten from Shangla, Swat, and one from Balochistan.

In a statement, the provincial minister for minerals, Mir Shoaib Nosherwani, said that the rescue operation was ongoing to recover the remaining miners.

The general secretary of Pakistan United Workers Federation, Balochistan, Pir Muhammad Kakar, along with Niamatullah Khan, Aziz Ahmad Sarangzai and Naseebullah Khan of the Mines and Brick Kiln Workers Federation, also visited the accident site.

Accidents in coal mines are a frequent occurrence in Balochistan, where safety procedures are flouted by mine owners and miners are forced to work in perilous conditions.

A report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in 2023 pointed out that health and safety standards were seldom put in place in these mines “primarily because of sporadic and irregular mine inspections”.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2025