3 bodies found after mine explosion

on 25/07/2012 22:02:42

Rescue workers have recovered the bodies of two miners after a gas explosion in a coal mine in northern Mexico.

A third body has been seen in the debris.

Hopes dwindled of finding any of the other four missing miners alive.

The two bodies recovered were those of miners aged 20 and 32, and they had suffered severe burns and were crushed by falling rock, according to Francisco Contreras Obregon, the head of the civil defence force in the area of northern Coahuila state.

A total of seven men were trapped underground after what appears to have been a methane gas explosion.

Rescue workers were about to reach the area where the blast happened, but debris blocked the way forward and there was little hope anyone could have survived.

The explosion occurred at the El Progreso mine, about 90 miles (150km) south-west of the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas.

Methane gas is a frequent hazard in coal mines, especially the kind of primitive, small-scale mines that dot Coahuila state.

Sixty-five miners died in an explosion at another Coahuila coal mine in 2006.