Serbia, Europe Brief News – Eight miners were killed and 20 injured in a state-owned coal mine accident in southern Serbia.
Local sources said there were 49 miners at the site at the time of the accident, most of them from Aleksinac.
The explosion occurred in the mine at about 6am local time (04:00 GMT), according to the broadcaster.
Goran Vidic, head of the local hospital, was quoted as saying all non-essential surgery had been cancelled and some patients had been discharged to make room for casualties.
“We have so far hospitalised 18 injured miners. Three of them suffer serious injuries,” he further said.
Two miners were also receiving treatment in the nearby city of Nis, RTS reported.
First responders dispatched to the scene managed to rescue about a dozen peopleow. Hever, several remained trapped, according to the broadcaster.
“Inspectors, police and all relevant authorities are at the scene, doing what is necessary to determine the cause of this tragedy,” said the Mining and Energy Minister Zorana Mihailovic.
“Security measures are at the highest level in the coal mine, but this time there was a sudden release of methane and simply the monitoring and the equipment that were in place did not help,” he said.
The Aleksinac coal mine is prone to methane saturation and in November 1989 about 90 miners died in an explosion there. In 1998, 29 miners died in the same mine.
Not the First Accident
This is not the first accident at the mine, according to local media. A methane gas explosion killing 13 in 2004. More widely, accidents in Russian mines are not uncommon.
In 2016, authorities assessed the safety of the country’s 58 coal mines and declared 34% of them potentially unsafe. The list did not include the Listvyazhnaya mine at the time, Russian reports say.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the loss of life as “a great tragedy”.
