(Reuters) – Up to five Bosnian miners were feared dead on Friday after a rock burst left them trapped, colleagues and rescuers said, as emergency teams helped nearly 30 others reach the surface to end an 18-hour ordeal underground.
The manager of the Raspotocje mine, Esad Civic, said 29 had been rescued, among 34 who had been trapped half a kilometer below the surface after an earthquake on Thursday afternoon.
“We have succeeded in reaching the trapped miners and evacuation is under way,” rescuer Sedin Tufekcic told reporters.
Miners and rescuers at the scene said they feared three of the miners had died, while Sinan Husic, head of the regional miners union, said the death toll could be five.
The rock burst was the third this year at the mine, and the previous two injured 16 miners, Civic said.
Dozens of relatives, some complaining about the mine’s safety record, waited anxiously inside the rundown socialist-era complex for news of their loved ones, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene.
“We are worried so much,” said 12-year-old Maida Isakovic through tears as she waited for her father Fejzo to come out.
Their faces blackened by coal dust, several miners were stretchered to emergency vehicles as soon as they emerged, while others were able to walk unaided.
Thursday’s 3.5 magnitude earthquake hit the central town of Zenica, causing rocks in the nearby mine to fracture half an hour later, blocking parts of the mine, officials said on Friday.
The Raspotocje mine produces coal for Bosnia’s largest power utility. It employs 430 miners.
Civic said the mine was one of the best equipped in the region before the collapse of the Yugoslav federation. But it had been damaged by shelling during the Bosnian war and not upgraded since.
It was the site of major accident in 1982 when 39 miners died in a rock burst.
(Reporting by Maja Zuvela, editing by John Stonestreet)
