A devastating methane-linked explosion at a southern Pakistan coal mine has claimed the lives of at least 34 workers, with search operations ongoing for additional trapped miners, local disaster authorities confirmed Friday. The blast ripped through the mine site in Sorange, located roughly 50 kilometers from Quetta, the capital of resource-rich Balochistan province, during operational hours on Thursday, triggering an urgent overnight rescue mission that extended into the next day.
In an official statement released in the early hours of Friday, the Southern Balochistan Provincial Disaster Management Authority confirmed that recovery teams had retrieved 34 deceased miners from the collapsed tunnel. The authority noted that joint search and rescue teams remained on site to locate any remaining trapped workers, but declined to share how many miners were inside the mine at the time of the explosion.
Witness accounts from the site reveal that fellow miners rushed to the tunnel immediately after the blast to attempt a self-rescue before official teams arrived. “Other miners descended into the mine after the explosion for a rescue operation, but they also died,” Ahmed Zada, a mine worker present at the site, told Agence France-Presse.
By Thursday night, crowds of distraught relatives, first responders, and local mine workers had gathered at the concrete tunnel entrance to await updates. Footage and witness reports show rescuers, some only wearing standard street clothes rather than full safety gear, carrying soot-covered bodies out of the mine on stretchers to waiting ambulances and transport vehicles.
Mining disasters are a recurring crisis in Pakistan, with Balochistan recording disproportionately high rates of workplace fatalities in the sector. The province, Pakistan’s largest by geographic area and one of its poorest, lags far behind other regions of the country in key development metrics including education, employment access, and infrastructure growth. Despite its vast natural reserves of coal, gold, and copper, weak regulatory enforcement has left the mining sector rife with unsafe working conditions. Labor rights groups have repeatedly called on provincial and national authorities to strengthen mandatory safety standards and increase inspections to prevent preventable accidents, though little substantive reform has been enacted to date.