An explosion followed by a fire in a coal mine in western Turkey killed 157 miners and trapped hundreds more on Tuesday, a provincial mayor said, in what appeared to be the country's worst mining accident in years.
Rescue workers pumped oxygen into the mine to try to keep those still trapped by the blaze alive as thousands of family members and fellow workers, clamoring for information, gathered outside the town's hospital, held back behind police lines.
The blast in the power unit of the mine in Soma, around 120 km (75 miles) northeast of the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, triggered an electricity outage, making the elevators unusable and leaving hundreds of miners stranded underground.
It was not immediately clear if the fire had been isolated.
Cengiz Ergun, mayor of Manisa province where Soma is located, said nearly 600 workers were underground at the time of the explosion. Citing health officials at the entrance to the mine, he told broadcaster CNN Turk that 157 miners had died.
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