On Tuesday, authorities reported that hundreds of Turkish rescue workers were searching through a cyanide-laced field for nine miners who were swallowed by a landslide that swept over their open pit.
Photos taken at the scene showed the landslide sweeping across a valley and crashing into a road where some workers traveled by vehicle.
Workers Trapped in Turkish Gold Mine Landslide
SAMANDAG, TURKEY - FEBRUARY 23: Deep rifts and the landslide formed after the earthquake in the Set Road area on February 23, 2023 in Samandag, Turkey. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit near Gaziantep, Turkey, in the early hours of Monday February 6, followed by another 7.5-magnitude tremor just after midday. The quakes caused widespread destruction in southern Turkey and northern Syria and were felt in nearby countries.
Turkey's Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya confirmed there was no update on the nine out of 667 workers missing at the goldmine in the İliç region of the province's eastern Erzincan.
Yerlikaya told state-run TRT television that they installed their rescue vehicles, generators, and night lighting equipment and they wish to give good news to the families of these brothers.
The experts and local officials said the presence of cyanide, a very hazardous chemical substance used to extract gold from ore, in the ground hindered the search.
Independent Mining Labour Union representative Basaran Aksu told Turkish media that cyanide soil collapsed at the site.
Aksu noted that specialized tools would be needed for the search. He said that the cyanide field is one of Turkey's largest and may make the search take a very long time.
The province lies on the Karasu River's northern bank, a major Euphrates tributary from Turkey to Syria and Iraq.
The environment ministry announced that it had blocked off a stream from the open pit to prevent contamination of the Euphrates.
Environmental activists and local officials attempted to shut down the open pit mine following a cyanide leak in 2022. It reopened after closing for a few months after its operator paid a fine, which infuriated Turkey's opposition parties.
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Mining Engineers Speak Out
Cemalettin Küçük, an engineer who co-authored a study on safety, stated that the soil was full of "stone fragments containing cyanide" when the mine's operator applied for authorization to expand its capacity.
"We are talking about a mountain weighing millions of tonnes," Küçük told Turkish media. "We have warned about this many times."
The former president of the Chamber of Mining Engineers, Mehmet Torun, claimed that elements washed with sulfuric and cyanide were present in the massive pile of soil sliding towards the Euphrates River.
Torun warned that the mountain was being blown up, gold extracted from it, and the waste piled aside like a mountain of garbage. He continued that the huge mass bathed in cyanide flows towards the Euphrates River.
Anagold, a private company that runs the İliç mine, said it was working to minimize the effects of this 'painful' incident.
Anagold released a statement and said they would mobilize all their means to shed light on this incident urgently. On Tuesday, the justice ministry tasked four public prosecutors to investigate the mine's operations.
Turkey has experienced several mining mishaps in the last few decades and is vulnerable to devastating landslides.
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