a tailing pipe carrying uranium waste from the Uranium Corporation of India Limited

SHASHANK SHEKHAR

Rescue team members and BCCL officials outside the Godhar mines near Dhanbad on Monday. Picture by Gautam Dey

Dhanbad, Sept. 8: A fire broke out late last evening at Kusunda colliery, about 9km from Dhanbad, forcing 400 families to be evacuated from near the open-cast mine belonging to Bharat Coking Coal Limited.

Senior BCCL officials at the spot said it would take at least four to five days to douse the raging flames hardly 500km from the busy NH-32 that connects the coal belt town to Bokaro.

An explosion in a northeastern coal mine left 18 workers dead and 7 missing, the State Administration of Work Safety said Tuesday.

The blast occurred Monday at the Baijiagou Mine in Faku County, Liaoning Province, it said, and 56 miners escaped without injury.

Officials said last month that safety had improved, though China's mines remained the world's most dangerous. The death toll for each million tons of coal produced fell to 1.05 people in the first half of2008, compared to 1.485 for all of 2007 and 3.08 for 2005, officials said.

PANJIM, AUG 19

HERALD CORRESPONENT

BICHOLIM, AUG 18

At least 31 people died Saturday in a mudslide at an illegal gold mine in Burkina Faso, state-run radio said.
Miners dug through the mud to try to rescue survivors and pull out bodies in the mining village of Boussoukoula in southwest Burkina Faso, state radio said. Heavy rains were blamed for the landslide.
The accident comes after a June government order for unofficial mines to close until September 30 because of the risk of accidents during the rainy season, when hastily dug tunnels can easily collapse.

several houses collapsed and many others developed cracks after over a hectare land subsided at an underground mine of Sangramgarh Coaleries of Eastern Coalfields at Samadi village in Burdwan district of West Bengal on June 18. About 500 villagers have been shifted to a different place. An 11-year-old boy was buried under rubble and could be rescued with great effort. People accused

Beijing: An accident in a northern Chinese coal mine has left 21 miners dead, state press reported on Monday, citing a local provincial mining bureau. The cause was not immediately clear but miners were first reported trapped in the mine in one of China's prime coal producing areas on Saturday morning, the China News Service said.

A landslide has killed 12 illegal copper miners and buried at least nine others in Indonesia's eastern province of Papua, the police said on Tuesday. "The illegal miners were working in an area between two tall cliffs and one side collapsed," local police chief Godhelp told AFP by telephone. "We have found 12 bodies so far and there are at least nine more of them."

The government has assured that it is taking measures to ensure that people living in areas affected by subterranean fire and subsidence in the coal mining areas of West Bengal and Jharkhand are shifted. This was stated by Union minister of state for coal mines Santosh Bagrodia in the Lok Sabha in response to a calling attention moved in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday by two MPs, Mr Basudeb Acharia of the CPI(M) and Mr Adhir Chowdhury of the Congress.

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