Three die in Moroccan coal mine accident

Three people have died from carbon dioxide suffocation inside a well for collecting coal in Jerada province in Morocco.

Local authorities in the Moroccan province confirmed the report and said they immediately dispatched a team of rescuers to the scene as soon as they were informed of the tragedy in order to help the three trapped victims, aged 52, 44, and 43.

Tragic happenings

The coal well is used by one of the legally constituted cooperatives in a forest region in the Laouinat commune, Jerada province, located in the Oriental region of northeastern Morocco. The rescue attempts proved unsuccessful, however, and the bodies of the three victims were discovered motionless in the well.  They have further launched an inquiry into the tragedy, which is being overseen by the competent public prosecutor.

This is not the first tragic incident happening on a mining site in Jerada.  Two miners died in the region in a similar incident in December 2017, garnering widespread national attention.  A year later, in November 2018, a 25-year-old man died in a mine collapse in Jerada. In the same year, three additional coal miners died when zinc and lead mining shafts collapsed in Morocco’s northern city.

As a result, in 2019, the Moroccan government ordered Jerada authorities to close 2000 abandoned and illegally exploited holes in the region. The government had first decommissioned Jerada’s coal mines in 1998 due to the high frequency of fatal accidents, but they were later reopened, prolonging the misery and human sacrifice miners face in the province.