WARSAW: Two workers were killed due to an outburst of methane and rock masses at the Pniowek coal mine in southern Poland, owner JSW said on Monday evening.
The company said that after 5 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Monday, a large amount of methane was released at the Pniowek mine, where a high-performance roadheader was operating with 10 workers underground.
Eight managed to evacuate on their own, while contact with two others was lost, JSW said. After a seven-hour rescue operation, teams located the missing miners who were pronounced dead at the scene by a doctor, the company said.
On Tuesday morning, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk offered condolences to the victims' families on X, while President Karol Nawrocki said he received the news of the miners' deaths "with great sorrow".
Polish Press Agency (PAP) said that the deaths were the 14th and 15th fatalities in mining accidents in Poland this year, and the 11th and 12th in hard coal mines. The Pniowek mine is among the country's operations with the highest methane risk, PAP reported.
Two killed in underground explosion at Polish coal mine
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Two killed in underground explosion at Polish coal mine
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
