10 miners killed in deadly blast at Gbani in Upper East Region

A deadly blast at a mining concession belonging to Shaanxi Mining Company at Gbani in the Talensi District of the Upper East Region, MyNewsGh.com has confirmed has led to the death of Ten miners

The deceased persons who are not staff of the company it is gathered, are illegal miners who used a different route in getting into the mine but tried to escape through same following a blast inhaled dangerous chemicals and died.

A staff of the company who spoke to MyNewsGh.com on grounds of strict anonymity, revealed that five bodies of the miners were recovered as at about 5AM on Wednesday with the remainder pulled out later and taken to the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital morgue for preservation

The incident MyNewsGh.com source revealed, occurred at 3:10AM when the miners sneaked into the area unknown to them engineers of the company had scheduled explosives to extract some rocks rich in gold for processing at the same time.

It was while they were inside that the explosion occurred trapping them inside resulting in the illegal miners inhaling the dangerous chemicals and passing out with about 10 deaths said to have been recorded.

It is unclear if survivors are among the trapped miners but our source revealed that a number of them who are unconscious have been rushed to the health facility with hope of being resuscitated.

Public Relations Officer (PRO) Shaanxi Mining Ghana, Maxwell Wooma confirms the incident to MyNewsGh.com but indicate that the victims are not staff of the company.

In his account he said “They are not our staff. Most of these things happen at the blind side of our own operations. But because we are very close to them, they usually use us as a convenient alibi when these accidents occur. It’s in the course of their own operations that this has occurred. When we get to the hospital, we can establish who brought who, how many did the person bring, at what time and where were they working? At least, this should be able to assist the public with the truth and the facts. It’s very clear that the (victims) were not our staff”

In an earlier report published on Starrfmonline.com, he was also quoted as saying “I received a call around 1:00am that some people had been brought to the regional hospital and others the Afrikids Medical Centre by one gentleman called Kofi Macho and another Bantama Kwesi. They say they inhaled gases when they were doing their operations. So, I asked whether these were our staff and they indicated ‘no’”