Hundreds of Turkish rescue workers were searching cyanide-strewn fields Tuesday for nine miners who were swallowed by an open-pit landslide.
Images from the scene showed a landslide moving across a valley and hitting the road some of the workers were traveling on.
Turkey’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said there was no news that nine of the 667 workers at the gold mine in Ilić district, eastern Erzincan province, had died.
Yerlikaya told state TV TRT: [rescue] Vehicles, generators, night lighting equipment. Our only hope is to be able to share the good news with these brothers’ families. ”
Experts and local officials said the search was complicated by the presence of cyanide, a highly toxic compound used to extract gold from ore, underground.
Basaran Aksu, head of the Independent Miners’ Union, told Turkish media that “cyanide soil has collapsed” at the site.
Mr Ax said the search would require specialized equipment.
“Because of the cyanide fields, the work may take a very long time,” he said. The facility is reportedly one of the largest in Türkiye.
The province is located on the northern bank of the Karas River, a major tributary of the Euphrates River that flows from Turkey to Syria and Iraq.
The Ministry of the Environment announced that the river flowing from the open pit mine has been closed to prevent pollution of the Euphrates River.
Environmentalists and local authorities attempted to shut down the open-pit mine following a cyanide leak in 2022.
The factory was closed for several months but reopened after the operator paid a fine, sparking a backlash from the Turkish opposition.
When the mine operator asked for permission to expand production capacity, engineer Gemarettin Küçuk, co-author of the report on mine safety, said the soil was “stone debris containing cyanide.” He said he was satisfied.
“We are talking about a mountain weighing several million tons,” Küçük told Turkish media. “We have warned you about this many times.”
Mehmet Torun, former president of the Chamber of Mining Engineers, said the huge mound of earth sliding towards the Euphrates River was made up of material washed with cyanide and sulfuric acid.
“For years, the mountain was blown up, the gold extracted from it, and the waste piled up on the side like a pile of garbage. Now this huge mass, covered in cyanide, is floating in the Euphrates River. “It’s flowing towards us,” he warned.
Anagold, the private company that operates the Ilic mine, said it was working to minimize the impact of the “heartbreaking” incident.
“We will use all means possible to urgently solve this case,” Anagold said in a statement.
The Ministry of Justice on Tuesday appointed four prosecutors to investigate the mine’s operations.
Turkey is prone to deadly landslides and has seen a spate of mining accidents in recent decades.
