Death toll rises to 4 as bodies of three more miners recovered from flooded Assam coal mine
At least five miners are still trapped inside the flooded coal mine in Assam’s Dima Hasao district.
2 min read
The labourers were on Monday trapped inside the 3-Kilo Coal Quarry in Umrangso area, around 250 km from Guwahati, after a sudden gush of water flooded the site. (Express photo)The bodies of three more miners were retrieved from the flooded coal mine in Assam’s Dima Hasao district on Saturday morning, five days after at least nine miners got trapped there. While four bodies have been recovered so far, at least five others continue to be trapped in the Umrangso coal mine, though there is little hope of them being rescued alive.
The body of one of the miners was retrieved at 7.36 am on Saturday during a joint operation by the Army and the National Disaster Response Force. The deceased has been identified as 27-year-old Lijen Magar, a resident of Umrangso. The second body retrieved later is yet to be identified.
Earlier, the body of Ganga Bahadur Sreshto had been recovered on Tuesday morning. After that, rescue efforts had been frustrated by the water level inside the flooded rathole mine not subsiding despite persistent dewatering efforts.
The site of the incident is located close to Assam’s border with Meghalaya, which had in 2018 witnessed one of the worst mining mishaps of the region when 15 workers died after being trapped in a flooded rat-hole mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills.
Dima Hasao has widespread coal, limestone and granite quarrying activities, and the coal reserves of Umrangso, where the incident took place, are known as Assam Quarries.
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