Rescuers have recovered the bodies of four more workers from a collapsed underground room at a giant U.S.-owned gold and copper mine in Indonesia, bringing the confirmed death toll to nine.
According to reports, nineteen others are still missing and feared dead.
The Grasberg mine, the world’s second largest copper mine, has an estimated 24,000 employees.
A tunnel collapsed there last week when 38 workers were doing undergoing safety training. Ten injured miners were rescued.
In 2011, workers staged a three-month protest asking for better pay. The miners went back to work after negotiating a pay rise of almost 40 percent.
“I am deeply saddened and disturbed by this event,” Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc’s CEO Richard Adkerson said in a statement. “Out focus continues to be continuing efforts to gain access to the victims still buried at the accident, carried out as quickly as can be done safely.”
Image: © Alfindra Primaldhi
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