Landslide Buries Nine Turkish Miners
February 13, 2024 Hour: 12:41 pm
On Tuesday, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya confirmed that a landslide at a gold mine in the province of Erzincan buried nine miners.
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The collapse occurred around 2:30 pm local time at an open-pit mine near the Bagistas reservoir, about 630 kilometers east of Ankara. Authorities search for the missing miners.
“There are 400 people participating in this task,” Yerlikaya said, while AFAD, the Turkish emergency service, confirmed the dispatch of rescue teams from eight nearby provinces.
The landslide occurred in a mass of minerals extracted from the mine and accumulated for chemical treatment, occupying between 0.8 and 1 hectare. The avalanche was heading toward an open space of 10 hectares.
Catastrophic landslide at Anagold Gold Mine in Türkiye’s Erzincan leaves numerous miners trapped under debris as search and rescue under way pic.twitter.com/oPh5kxSV30
— Türkiye Today (@turkiyetodaycom)
February 13, 2024
The company operating the mine, Anagold, stated that the landslide occurred in an area where gold-bearing minerals undergo leaching, meaning they are accumulated in the open air and subjected to a cyanide bath to separate the gold from the rock.
The incident has caused enormous concern because the open-pit mine complex, which covers an area of about 10 square kilometers, extends practically to the shore of the Euphrates River, just above the Bagistas dam.
“There is currently no leakage into the river… the landslide has not reached the Euphrates,” Erzincan Governor Hamza Aydogdu stated.
If the cyanide-mixed minerals were to reach the river, they would cause immense disaster for the local fauna and poison at least one hundred kilometers of the watercourse, including the next dam, water reserves for agricultural and human use.
Anagold is 80 percent owned by the multinational SSR Mining, while the remaining 20 percent belongs to Çalik Holding, one of Turkey’s largest industrial conglomerates, considered close to the Islamist AKP party and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
His son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, was CEO of Çalik Holding from 2007 to 2013.
The mine has been operating since 2010 and has reserves of 3.2 million ounces of gold, with a gold content of 2.1 grams per ton of ore.
In 2022, there was a cyanide leak inside the mining complex, but nonetheless, Turkish authorities forgave Anagold a tax debt of US$7.2 million.
Activists have long warned about the ecological dangers of leaching mineral accumulated outdoors and saturated with cyanide, a highly toxic substance.
The Turkish Chamber of Engineers and Architects reminded that last December it already filed a complaint against plans to expand the mine, as they lacked the proper permits. The Justice Ministry has appointed four prosecutors to investigate possible liabilities in today’s incident.
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Autor: teleSUR/ JF
Fuente: Xinhua
