TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results13 feared dead in flooded Indian 'rat hole' mine
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Miners help unload a metal basket that was winched up to the surface from a deep coal mine shaft near Rimbay village in the Indian northeastern state of Meghalaya. (AFP/Roberto Schmidt)
A
t least 13 miners were feared dead after being trapped by flooding in an illegal "rat hole" coal mine site in remote northeastern India, police said Friday.
Dozens of emergency workers were pumping water out of a large trench that was flooded early Thursday near a river in mineral-rich Meghalaya state.
"We are doing our best to reach out to them. Our information is 13 people were inside at the time of flooding," police official Lethindra Sangma told AFP.
An Indian court had banned coal mining in the area in 2014 after environmental activists complained it was responsible for severe water pollution.
But the practice continues with locals illegally extracting coal using dangerous so-called rat hole mines.
This involves digging pits on the side of hills and then burrowing small horizontal tunnels into the hill to reach a coal seam.
At least 15 miners were killed after they were trapped inside a flooded rat-hole mine elsewhere in Meghalaya in 2012. Their bodies were never recovered.
