Eight miners killed as coal mine shaft in Serbia collapses

Eightminers werekilledand 18 injured on Friday when ashaftcollapsed at a state-ownedcoalminein southernSerbia.

The Mining and Energy ministry said the accident at the Sokomine, about 250 kilometres south of Belgrade, happened whencoalcollapsed in an excavation chamber, leading to "a sudden penetration of methane into the working space."

There were 49miners on the rota at the time of the accident, most of them from the nearby town of Aleksinac.

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None of the injuredminers, suffering fractures and the effects of gas inhalation, was in a life-threatening condition, health authorities said.

At the site,miners were seen milling behind the gate as vans took away bodies, a Reuters witness said. Police patrols were in the area.

In a statement, the ministry quotedminedirector Drago Milinkovic as saying security measures were in place at the time of the accident.

"There was a sudden release of methane and there was nothing we could do," the statement said.

Zorana Mihajlovic, the outgoing mining and energy minister, said police and other relevant bodies had launched an investigation.

"In the early morning hours at 4.10 am they (theminers) got suffocated ... the increase of methane (gas levels) was so high, that they got suffocated," she told Reuters.

The so-called Aleksinaccoalmining area is prone to methane saturation and in 1998 27miners died in an explosion in the Sokomine. In November 1989, 90miners died in a fire in amineclose to the nearby town of Aleksinac.

Serbiaproduces two thirds of its electric power in ageing and pollutingcoal-fired plants. In 2020, the country produced around 43.4 million short tons ofcoal, mainly from open pits.

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