At least 205 buddy died in a mining accident in Turkey Soma killed, hundreds are trapped, underground still raging fire. Rescue workers search for survivors, the opposition denounces the lack of safety precautions. 
 
 At least 205 buddy died in a mining accident in Turkey Soma killed, hundreds are trapped, underground still raging fire. Rescue workers search for survivors, the opposition denounces the lack of safety precautions. 
 
 “Time is against us” – says the Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz after the serious accident in a mine in the western Turkish Soma. At least 201 buddy died when a substation exploded on Tuesday afternoon and caught fire. The fire continues to burn, the minister said. Hundreds of people are still trapped underground. Rescue workers continue to search for survivors. 
 
 Yildiz is rushed to the accident site in the province of Manisa. He said the rescue efforts had reached a “critical point” – with every minute that passes, the more likely that the trapped not survive. 
 
 80 miners were injured, four of them life-threatening. 360 workers could be brought to safety. Survivors were only sporadically brought over days, many of them had smoke inhalation and could barely breathe on Wednesday morning. Dozens of security forces were deployed in order to keep lanes for emergency vehicles. 
 
 At shift change on Tuesday afternoon estimated 780 men should have been in the pit, when some 400 meters underground, the explosion occurred. The power went out, the lifts and the air supply for the workers no longer worked. 
 
 At a depth of 2000 meters, hundreds were imprisoned – about four kilometers from the mine entrance. For the victims and the rescuers began the race against time, the many should lose that night. 
 
 The rescue team tried to breath to blow air into the shaft. For safety circuits on site was reported, two air bubbles, it would have formed. At the one hand, the recovery forces had access. In the other, the miners were but cut off from help. 
 
 Turkey Mine Disaster:Bang the end members on site 
 
 Before the entrance to the mine and before the district hospital of Soma , the relatives of the trapped people have gathered . They are trying desperately to get news about their fathers and sons. “Since the early afternoon, I now already waiting ,” says Sena Isbiler , the mother of a miner . ” So far I have not heard anything . ” 
 
 The authorities have four rescue teams sent into the pit , trying to put out the fire below ground and to supply the trapped miners with fresh air. The whole country rooting for and hoping for good news. On television, an expert on angry reactions of the audience makes when he describes the consequences of carbon monoxide poisoning underground as ” sweet death ” in which the person can feel no pain . 
 
 The people in town are shocked – some is already having anger at the authorities wide. The pit in Soma is one of the largest employers in the region in the province of Manisa . Around 6500 pal work here. 
 
 Turkey Mine Disaster:Tragic accident or massacre of greed? 
 
 Authorities and the Group Management speak of a tragic accident and emphasize the privately operated mine had been recently checked. The Turkish Ministry of Labour and Social Security said the pit had been investigated last March 17 for security problems and there had been no complaints. 
 
 However, given the frequent accidents in Turkish mines the doubts are great. “There is no security,” the workers Oktay Berrin says Soma. “The unions are just puppets, and the management thinks only about money.” 
 
 The opposition party CHP had failed in an attempt in Parliament from Ankara a few weeks ago to let investigate incidents in the pit of Soma: Erdogan’s ruling AKP party ironed the application. Critics accuse the government of having its compliance with safety precautions ignored in the privatization of many former state-owned mining companies in recent years. 
 
 For the left trade union confederation DISK misfortune of Soma is therefore a “massacre”, as the chairman Kani Beko says. In pits as in the Soma are all chains of subcontractors at work that would not be controlled properly. Safety would be ignored: “It’s all about winning.” 
 
 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled a foreign trip and announced himself on the scene. Even opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu want to travel to Soma. 
 
 Mine accidents are not uncommon in Turkey. Inadequate safety measures and lack of controls in mining operations have contributed in recent years repeatedly to serious accidents. 1992 so far worst accident occurred in a mine in Zonguldak. Here, after a gas explosion 263 buddy had been killed. ||||| Turkish police have fired teargas and water cannon at 800 protesters who were marching from a university in Ankara to the energy ministry to protest about the fatal coal mine explosion that has killed at least 200 miners and left hundreds trapped underground . 
 
 Protests against Soma Holdings, the company that owns the coal mine that exploded killing more than 200 people and trapping hundreds more kilometres below ground, have spread across Turkey with many demonstrators staging sit-ins and holding banners. 
 
 The development came as prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is visiting the scene, told reporters that the death toll of the disaster had risen to 232. 
 
 Riot police blocked off the street outside the Istanbul offices of Soma Holdings where a group of people sprayed "Murderers" on the walls and held placards reading: "This building rises on the blood of workers" and "They didn't die beautifully. This is murder not fate". 
 
 They were referring to the words of former labour minister Omer Dincer who said that 30 miners who lost their lives in an accident in Zonguldak in 2010 "died beautifully" and Erdogan who claimed their deaths was "fate". 
 
 In Istanbul, groups of youths staged "lay-in" demos in Istanbul metro and Taksim Square. They pretended to be dead to demonstrate against Soma Holdings' safety records. 
 
 Protesters also gathered in the Istanbul neighbourhood of Besiktas. 
 
 Turkish unions called for a nationwide strike to protest at the deaths deaths and press for more safety measures in workplaces. 
 
 The ruling AK Party has come under a barrage of criticism. Erdogan's party has been accused of dismissing a parliamentary motion submitted by the opposition Republican People's Party to investigate safety in the Soma mines as recently as 29 April. 
 
 Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz called the Soma fire "the country's deadliest accident ever" as 300 more workers were feared trapped underground. Yildiz added that 787 workers had been in the mine at the time of the blast. 
 
 A cold storage warehouse, usually used for food, and freezer trucks were transformed into makeshift morgues. 
 
 The government has ordered flags to fly at half-mast and declared three days of national mourning. ||||| The ruling AK Party has come under a barrage of criticism in Turkey following the Soma coal mine explosion that has killed at least 205 people and left hundreds more trapped underground. 
 
 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party has been accused of dismissing a parliamentary motion submitted by the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) to investigate safety in the Soma mines as recently as 29 April. 
 
 The CHP local deputy for Manisa province, where Soma is located had denounced the frequent mine accidents and deaths that should have served as warning to avoid major disasters. But the parliament rejected the investigation with votes from the AK Party. 
 
 An AKP lawmaker from the same province even boasted that Turkish mines were safer than others, according to reports. 
 
 The hashtag #kazadegilcinayet which roughly translates as "murder not an accident" is trending on Twitter. 
 
 Protests are planned in front of the Istanbul headquarters of Soma Komur Isletmeleri, the operators of the mine. The head of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DISK), which is one of the major unions in Turkey, said that a large number of subcontracted workers were operating in the mine. 
 
 "There are second and third-tier subcontractors working in this mine. I hope that the death toll will not further climb, but I am not optimistic. There is a massacre that happened following the explosion inside," Kani Beko said. 
 
 Among the dead was a 15-year-old boy employed illegally at the mine. 
 
 Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz has called the Soma fire "the country's deadliest accident ever" as 300 more workers are feared to be trapped inside. Most of the victims died due to carbon monoxide poisoning, according to officials. 
 
 "We are worried that this death toll will rise...I have to say that our hopes are dimming in terms of the rescue efforts," Yildiz said. 
 
 The explosion took place after 3pm on Tuesday and triggered a deadly inferno still burning underground, hindering rescue efforts. 
 
 Yildiz added that 787 workers had been in the mine at the time of the blast. A cold storage warehouse, usually used for food, and freezer trucks were transformed into makeshift morgues. 
 
 The government has ordered Turkish flags to fly at half-mast and a 3-day national mourning. ||||| SOMA, Turkey Furious Turks heckled Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and jostled his entourage on Wednesday as protests erupted in several cities over a coal mine disaster in which at least 274 people died, making it the worst industrial accident in the nation's history. 
 
 With rescuers still pulling bodies from the site in western Turkey, anger swept a country that has seen a decade of rapid economic growth but still suffers from one of the world's worst workplace safety records. 
 
 Erdogan expressed his regret after visiting the site in Soma, about 480 km (300 miles) southwest of Istanbul, where around 100 miners are thought to be still trapped underground following Tuesday's fire. "We as a nation of 77 million are experiencing a very great pain," he told a news conference. 
 
 But he appeared to turn defensive when asked whether sufficient precautions had been in place. "Explosions like this in these mines happen all the time. It's not like these don't happen elsewhere in the world," he said, reeling off a list of global mining accidents since 1862. 
 
 Angry residents broke windows at the local government offices in Soma, some chanting "Erdogan resign", while parts of the crowd lining the street booed as the prime minister walked through the town, jostling with members of his entourage. 
 
 Protesters later kicked Erdogan's car as it left the area. 
 
 Opponents of Erdogan - who has already faced mass protests against his rule in the past year - have attacked his government for leasing mines to parts of the private sector cozy with the ruling party, and accuse it of ignoring repeated warnings about their safety. 
 
 In Istanbul, police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse several thousand people, some wearing miners' hard hats and headlamps. Police also clashed with demonstrators in the capital Ankara and there were protests in other cities. 
 
 Many took to social media to express their outrage at the government's handling of the crisis. "Beyond ridiculous. Turkish PM cites 19th century Britain to prove mining accidents are 'typical'," one user wrote on Twitter. 
 
 MOURNERS WEEP 
 
 Fire knocked out power at the mine and shut down ventilation shafts and elevators on Tuesday afternoon. Emergency workers pumped oxygen into the mine to try to keep those trapped alive during a rescue effort that lasted through the night. Thousands of family members and co-workers gathered outside the town's hospital searching for information on their loved ones. 
 
 "We haven't heard anything from any of them, not among the injured, not among the list of dead," said one elderly woman, Sengul, whose two nephews worked in the mine along with the sons of two of her neighbors. 
 
 "It's what people do here, risking their lives for two cents ... They say one gallery in the mine has not been reached, but it's almost been a day," she said. 
 
 A mechanical digger opened a row of fresh graves at Soma's main cemetery. An imam presided over the funeral of six miners as a few hundred mourners wept in silence. 
 
 The fire broke out during a shift change, leading to uncertainty over the exact number of miners trapped. Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said the death toll as of 1930 GMT on Wednesday was 274, making it Turkey's deadliest accident. Late on Tuesday he said 787 workers had been in the mine. 
 
 Yildiz warned that "hopes were dimming" of finding many more survivors. 
 
 Turkey's safety record in coal mining has been poor for decades, with its previous worst accident in 1992, when a gas blast killed 263 workers in the Black Sea province of Zonguldak. 
 
 The mine operator Soma Komur Isletmeleri said nearly 450 miners had been rescued and that the deaths were caused by carbon monoxide. It said the cause was not yet clear. 
 
 Initial reports suggested an electrical fault caused the blaze but Mehmet Torun, a board member and former head of the Chamber of Mining Engineers who was at the scene, said a disused coal seam had heated up, expelling carbon monoxide through the mine's tunnels and galleries. 
 
 "They are ventilating the shafts but carbon monoxide kills in 3 or 5 minutes," he told Reuters by telephone. 
 
 "Unless we have a major miracle, we shouldn't expect anyone to emerge alive at this point," he said, pointing to an outside chance that workers may have found air pockets to survive. 
 
 EXHAUSTED RESCUERS 
 
 The disaster highlighted Turkey's poor record on worker safety and drew renewed opposition calls for an inquiry into a drop in safety standards at previously state-run mines. The International Labour Organization ranked the EU candidate nation third worst in the world for worker deaths in 2012. 
 
 Erdogan earlier declared three days of national mourning and canceled an official visit to Albania. President Abdullah Gul also canceled a trip to China scheduled for Thursday in order to travel to Soma. 
 
 A pall of smoke hung above the area of the mine and Yildiz said the fire was still burning underground, hampering the rescue operation, which was halted for several hours as the evening wore on to allow exhausted rescuers to recover. 
 
 Turkey's disaster management agency AFAD said in an email 85 people had been treated for their injuries. 
 
 Freezer trucks and a cold storage warehouse usually used for food served as makeshift morgues as hospital facilities overflowed. Medical staff intermittently emerged from the hospital to read the names of survivors being treated inside, with families and fellow workers clamoring for information. 
 
 "This isn't a huge city. Everyone has neighbors, relatives or friends injured, dead or still trapped. I am trying to prepare my family for the worst," said Hasan Dogan, 27, watching TV news reports from a canteen set up outside the hospital. 
 
 Some 16,000 people from a population of 105,000 in the district of Soma work in the mining industry, according to Erkan Akcay, a local opposition politician. The district is no stranger to tragedies, but never before on this scale. 
 
 The words "For those who give a life for a handful of coal" are engraved on the entrance wall to the emergency clinic. 
 
 Teams of psychiatrists were being pulled together to counsel the families of victims. Paramilitary police guarded the entrance to the mine to keep distressed relatives at a safe distance, as residents offered soup, water and bread. 
 
 "They haven't brought any ambulances in such a long time that we've started to lose hope," said Hatice Ersoy, 43, a woman in a headscarf sitting on a pavement outside the hospital. 
 
 POOR RECORD 
 
 Turkey's rapid growth over the past decade has seen a construction boom and a scramble to meet soaring energy demand, with worker safety standards often failing to keep pace. It is a net importer of coal. 
 
 The Labour Ministry said late on Tuesday its officials had carried out regular inspections at the Soma mine, most recently in March, and that no irregularities had been detected. 
 
 But Hursit Gunes, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People's Party, said a previous request for a parliamentary inquiry into safety and working conditions at mines around Soma had been rejected by the ruling AK Party. 
 
 "I'm going to renew that parliamentary investigation demand today. If (the government) has been warned about this and they did nothing, then people will be angry, naturally. The opposition warned them. But there's unbelievable lethargy on this issue," Gunes told Reuters. 
 
 The ILO in 2012 said Turkey had the highest rate of worker deaths in Europe and the world's third-highest. In the mining sector, 61 people died in 2012, according to the ILO's latest statistics. Between 2002 and 2012, the death toll at Turkish mines totaled more than 1,000. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Yesim Dikmen in Soma; Humeyra Pamuk, Ayla Jean Yackley, Daren Butler, Dasha Afanasieva, Asli Kandemir and Evrim Ergin in Istanbul; Gulsen Solaker and Jonny Hogg in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall and Jonny Hogg; Editing by Peter Graff and David Stamp)
– With the death toll now at 282 and the hope of finding survivors diminishing, anger over yesterday's mine disaster in Turkey is spiking fast—and some aren't hesitating to point fingers. "WHAT HAPPENED IN SOMA IS NOT FATE, IT IS MURDER," a branch of the Chamber of Electrical Engineers wrote yesterday, claiming the cause of the fire was negligence, not "an electrical situation as presented to the public." The group said, per CNN, "the investigation revealed that the systems to sense poisonous and explosive gases in the mine and the systems to manage the air systems were insufficient and old" and air fans actually pushed flames farther through the mine; ventilation wasn't righted until "much later." A video, obtained by the Telegraph, isn't helping the government's standing after news that an opposition motion to inspect the mines was shot down last month. It appears to show an aide to PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan kicking a grieving protester, held down by paramilitary police in Soma, where protesters have vandalized a local ruling party office. Erdogan has said the opposition motion had "nothing to do with the Soma mine." Already Turkey's worst ever industrial accident, the death toll could reach 400 as 150 miners are still underground and no survivors have been found since yesterday morning, the Guardian notes. CNN adds the bodies of 200 miners have been returned to their families, while the AP reports on the songs of heartbreak being sung as backhoes dig rows of graves and funerals begin en masse.