Rescuers at a mine in eastern India said Sunday they had retrieved a total of 15 bodies 10 days after the coal face was flooded, but that 14 miners were still missing.
"We are hopeful of recovering more bodies by this evening," said Ramanuj Prasad, spokesman for Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. (BCCL), which owns the submerged Bagdih mine in Jharkhand state.
Prasad said three senior BCCL executives were suspended Sunday over the disaster which struck the mine on February 2. He said a worker who used dynamite at a nearby colliery and accidentally flooded Bagdih was fired.
The 241-meter (795-foot) deep Bagdih mine is in the coal-mining town of Dhanbad, some 120 kilometers (74 miles) northeast of Ranchi, the state capital of mineral-rich Jharkhand.
Disaster struck Bagdih 10 days ago when five million gallons of water gushed through a breach in the mine walls into the pitch-dark shaft.
Relatives say 51 miners were trapped although mine officials put the number at 43. Thirteen were brought out safely the same night. One of the victims, a 51-year-old miner, was brought out alive on Thursday.
Meanwhile officials said a miner who was trapped in another mine near Dhanbad was now feared dead.
BCCL, which owns all mines in the region, said water gushed into the Chaitudih colliery on Friday when engineers dynamited a nearby pond to drain its water.
Six people were hurt in the scramble for safety following the flooding.
In 1995, Bharat Coking Coal ordered around 100,000 miners to stay away from its coal mines after at least 74 workers died in a string of accidents following torrential rains.
In 1973 more than 365 miners drowned in the BCCL-run Chasnala mines in Dhanbad. Jharkhand accounts for a third of India's coal reserves of 204,650 million tonnes -- RANCHI, India (AFP)
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