AIBAK (Pajhwok): Four workers were killed when a coalmine tunnel collapsed in the Dara-i-SaufBala district of northern Samangan province, an official said on Saturday.
An official, Eng. Qurban, told Pajhwok Afghan News a team had been dispatched to the site to investigate Friday’s incident in Hesar area -- an area that is nestled in mountainous 80km off the district centre.
The government is said to have no control over the mine that is willfully dug up by locals. But Coal Enterprise Deputy Director Eng. MahboobRafiq acknowledged the Hesar mine was not a registered site.
MAZAR-I-SHARIF/AIBAK (PAN): Twenty-seven workers have been killed during an explosion inside a coalmine in northern Samangan province, officials said on Sunday.
Five people have been missing and 30 others trapped in the mine in Ravi Do Aab district since Saturday's blast, the deputy police chief for Samangan said.
Col. Musadiq Muzaffari told Pajhwok Afghan News the exact toll was yet to be ascertained. He linked the incident to the unprofessional extraction of coal.
BAMYAN CITY (PAN): The collapse of 54 holes in a coalmine has rendered 3,000 miners jobless in central Bamyan province, an official said on Wednesday.
Incidents of collapse in the mine in Kohmard district started last week, leading the authorities to stop extraction work to prevent possible fatalities, police said.
"The work will not resume until further orders from the Ministry of Mines," police spokesman Ahmad Ali Yarzada said.
PUL-I-KHUMRI (PAN): Eleven people were killed when a fire erupted inside a coalmine in northern Baghlan province on Saturday, officials said.
The incident happened in the Chinarak area of Nehrin district early in the morning, Fazal Rahman, the town's administrative head, told Pajhwok Afghan News.
He said the victims were extracting coal from the mine in an unprofessional way and that could have caused the fire, he believed.
PUL-I-KHUMRI (PAN): Hundreds of coal miners in northern Baghlan province on Sunday went on strike, calling for increase in their wages and provision of mining equipment.
About 400 workers stopped coal extraction from mines in Sang-i-Karkar, DoodKash and Ahan Dara areas and staged a demonstration in Pul-i-Khumri, the provincial capital.
The protestors said they would not go back at work until their wages were increased and required mining tools provided.
