Turkey mine blast: President Tayyip Erdogan visits site; death toll rises to 41

After visiting the coal mine site in Turkey's northern Bartin province on Saturday (October 15), the nation's President Tayyip Erdogan stated that the death toll has reached 41 from a methane blast. Erdogan informed that a probe has been into the cause of the incident.

Search and rescue members had been working to pull out miners trapped underground after a blast ripped through the mine near the small coal mining town of Amasra on Turkey's Black Sea coast on Friday. But on Saturday, the body of the last missing person was found.

Erdogan said, "Our priority was to find the miners in the gallery. We finally reached the last one. He also died, bringing the number of deaths to 41."

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"The reasons of this explosion and the people responsible for it, if any, will be revealed with an administrative and judicial investigation,"Erdogan said.

"These investigations have already been initiated in a multifaceted manner. Our priority was to reach the workers trapped underground. We have finally taken out the 41stminer," he added.

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"There was such dense dust and smoke that I did not see anything like that in my life. The dust was so dense, I couldn't see any ahead even with the lamp," a miner was quoted as saying in a Reuters report.

Previously, the country's Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 58 miners had survived the blast, "either by themselves or thanks to rescuers".

One miner was discharged from the hospital while 10 were still receiving treatment in Bartin and Istanbul, Soylu said.

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