World

BUENOS AIRES — Paleontologists in Argentina’s remote Patagonia region have discovered fossils of what was likely the largest dinosaur ever to roam the earth.

The creature is believed to be a new species of Titanosaur, a long-necked, long-tailed sauropod that walked on four legs and lived some 95 million years ago in the Cretaceous Period.

The dinosaur “weighed the equivalent of more than 14 African elephants”, or about 100 tonnes, said Jose Luis Carballido, a paleontologist at the Egidio Feruglio Museum in the southern Argentine city of Trelew.

“This is a true paleontological treasure,” Carballido said in a statement on Friday on the museum website.

“There are many remains and they were practically intact, something that does not frequently happen.”

Known fossils “of a giant Titanosaur are scarce and fragmentary”.

Museum director Ruben Cuneo told local media that the remains belong to “the largest known specimen” of its kind and “the most complete find of this type of dinosaur in the world”.

The fossils were accidently discovered in 2011 by a farm worker in a remote area in the Patagonian province of Chubut, some 1,300 kilometres south of Buenos Aires.

The creature was plant-eating and measured some 40 metres from head to tail, Cuneo said.

Photos posted on the museum website show a fossilised femur larger than the paleontologist pictured next to it.

Experts believe that the remains of seven dinosaurs, as well as the broken teeth of carnivores, are among the 200 fossils found at the Chubut site where the giant femur was found.

SOMA, Turkey — Anger at Turkey’s government boiled over Thursday when thousands went on strike and police clashed with protesters after at least 282 workers died in one of the worst mining accidents in modern history.

As hopes faded for scores more miners still trapped underground two days after the devastating blast, police fired tear gas and water cannon at around 20,000 anti-government protesters in the western city of Izmir.

Turkey’s four biggest unions called a one-day strike, saying workers’ lives were being jeopardised to cut costs and demanding that those responsible for the collapse of the coal mine in the western town of Soma in Manisa province be brought to account.

“Hundreds of our workers have been left to die from the very beginning by being forced to work in cruel production processes to achieve maximum profits,” they said in a joint statement, calling on people to wear black.

Anger at the disaster has swept across Turkey, where mine explosions and cave-ins are a frequent occurrence.

In Izmir, around 100 kilometres south of Soma, the 61-year-old head of one of the main unions Kani Beko was hospitalised after violent clashes with riot police.

In Ankara, police fired tear gas and water cannon on around 200 protesters, a day after thousands clashed with police in the capital and in Istanbul, accusing the government and mining industry of negligence.

President Abdullah Gul said on a visit to the mine Turkey faced “a great disaster”, and vowed action to prevent further such accidents.

“Whatever necessary will be done. We need to review all the regulations, like all developed countries do, so that these accidents do not happen again,” a sorrowful Gul said, with a cracking voice.

Government attitude ‘unacceptable’ 

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected claims of government culpability, saying that “such accidents happen”.

He compared the collapse to 19th-century mining disasters, saying that “204 people died in the UK in 1862 and 361 people in 1864”, in an apparent attempt to downplay its severity.

Erdogan was forced to take refuge in a shop after a furious reaction from relatives of the victims and the missing, some of whom began kicking his vehicle.

Photographs of his advisor kicking a protester in Soma sparked outrage on social media.

It is unclear how many workers are still trapped underground following the huge explosion on Tuesday, which was believed to have been set off by an electrical fault.

Mining operators put the figure at 90, but reports from rescue workers on the scene suggest the figure could be far higher. Most of the victims died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Kemal Ozkan, assistant general secretary of the international trade union federation IndustriALL Global Union, said the “staggering” number of fatalities made the mining disaster the worst in recent memory.

“Turkey has possibly the worst safety record in terms of mining accidents and explosions in Europe, and the third worst in the world,” he told AFP in an e-mailed statement.

“This recent tragedy must rank as the worst mining tragedy in recent memory, and is made all the more tragic by the seemingly uncaring attitude of the government and mining companies.”

The disaster has added to the huge political pressure on Erdogan, who faced mass protests last summer, and a corruption scandal involving his family and key allies in recent months.

“If the claims of negligence at the mine prove true, it will have a political price,” Professor Ilter Turan of Istanbul’s Bilgi University told AFP.

Intensifying the pressure on Erdogan, local media reported that the general manager of the mine operator Soma Komur, Ramazan Dogru, was married to a member of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, warned the government would struggle to contain the fallout from the disaster.

“Is this an act of God, or a case of negligence? We don’t know. The government must demonstrate the political will to comply with EU standards on work health and work safety in order for this catastrophe not to become a political minefield,” he told AFP.

Death announcements 

Authorities said 282 people were confirmed dead making it Turkey’s worst ever industrial accident.

Before midday prayers on Thursday, thousands of locals packed the cemetery in Soma where grave-diggers were still hollowing out a long line of graves.

All morning the loudspeakers in the town of 100,000 had been crackling with the sound of death announcements — the names of the deceased, and details of their burial arrangements.

“My husband works in another mine,” said Fethiye Kudu, watching the solemn graveside procession under the beating sun and wind. “I came out of solidarity. It’s very hard for us all.”

Early reports said 787 workers were underground when the blast occurred. By late Wednesday, “close to 450” workers had been rescued, according to Soma Komur.

But accounts from rescue workers cast doubt over these numbers.

Erdem Bakin, a doctor with the Search and Rescue organisation, said only around 70 to 80 people who were between the mine entrance and the transformer that exploded had survived.

The prosecutor’s office in Soma, a key centre for lignite coal mining located around 480 kilometres southwest of Istanbul, has launched an investigation into the disaster.

The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) said it asked parliament last month to investigate work-related accidents at coal mines in Soma, but the government turned down the request.

“We receive tip-offs every day that workers’ lives are under threat,” local CHP lawmaker Ozgur Ozel told Turkish media.

“We lawmakers from Manisa are tired of going to miner funerals.”

Turkey’s ministry of labour and social security said the Soma mine had been inspected eight times in the last four years, most recently on March 17, and was found to comply with safety regulations.

Soma Komur said it had taken maximum measures to ensure safety.

GAJARIA, Bangladesh — A heavily laden ferry capsized and sank in central Bangladesh on Thursday after being caught in a storm, leaving at least 12 people dead and hundreds more missing, police and officials said.

Survivors of what is the latest in a string of ferry disasters to blight Bangladesh said the vessel began to sway when the storm hit, finally tipping over and sinking in minutes, giving passengers little time to leap to safety.

The exact number of passengers was not immediately known. It is common for ferries to carry many more than their official limit.

“We are receiving confusing figures on how many passengers were on board when it sank, but the number could range from 200 to 350,” said district government administrator Saiful Hasan, who is coordinating the rescue effort.

“The toll now stands at 12,” he said of the accident on the river Meghna in Munshiganj district, some 50 kilometres south of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

Local police chief Ferdous Ahmed also confirmed the recovery of the bodies, which included at least two women and one child.

The double-decker vessel was travelling to the southern district of Shariatpur from Dhaka when it encountered problems and sank in the mid-afternoon, according to the police.

“Around 20-30 people managed to swim to safety when the boat went down,” Ahmed told AFP.

Rescue coordinator Hasan told AFP that a navy ship, a salvage vessel and about a dozen speedboats had reached the spot. Fire service divers had located the sunken ferry and were attempting to recover bodies as darkness fell.

The width of the river, the depth of the water and the strong currents were hampering rescuers’ efforts to retrieve the wreckage, Hasan said.

Hundreds of distraught relatives gathered on the banks of the river as the bodies were laid in lines in order to be identified.

Others accompanied rescuers on boats as they searched for the missing passengers.

25-year-old Sumon, who only uses one name, said his uncle and teenage cousin were both missing.

“They were travelling home from Dhaka to our village,” Sumon told AFP.

The local online newspaper Banglanews24.com quoted a survivor of the accident, Abdur Razzaq, as saying that the boat was hit by the storm suddenly and sank in a matter of minutes.

Fire service officer Nurul Alam, who was taking part in the rescue effort, told AFP: “I fear there are many more bodies trapped inside the vessel.”

History of disaster

Ferry accidents are common in Bangladesh, one of Asia’s poorest nations which is criss-crossed with more than 230 rivers.

Experts blame poorly maintained vessels, flaws in design and overcrowding for most of the tragedies.

Storms known locally as Kalboishakhi often hit Bangladesh during the early summer months in the lead-up to the monsoon, which generally begins in the first week of June.

Boats are the main form of travel in much of Bangladesh’s remote rural areas, especially in the southern and northeastern regions.

Some 150 people were killed in the same district in March 2012 after a overcrowded ferry carrying about 200 passengers sank after being hit by an oil barge in the dead of night.

In 2011, 32 people were killed after a passenger vessel sank in the same river in the same district after colliding with a cargo ship.

At least 85 people drowned in 2009 when an overloaded triple-decker ferry capsized off Bhola Island in the country’s south.

Naval officials have said more than 95 per cent of Bangladesh’s hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized boats do not meet minimum safety regulations.

KIEV — Ukraine’s government launched talks Wednesday on decentralising power as part of a European-backed peace plan but didn’t invite its main foes, the pro-Russia insurgents who have declared independence in the east.

That deliberate oversight left it unclear whether the negotiations might help cool the tensions in the east.

In his opening remarks, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said authorities were “ready for a dialogue” but insisted they will not talk to the pro-Russia gunmen who have seized buildings and fought government troops across eastern Ukraine.

“Let’s have a dialogue, let’s discuss specific proposals,” Turchynov said, “But those armed people who are trying to wage a war on their own country, those who are with arms in their hands trying to dictate their will, or rather the will of another country, we will use legal procedures against them and they will face justice.”

Insurgents in the east shrugged off the round-table talks as meaningless.

“We haven’t received any offers to join a round table and dialogue,” Denis Pushilin, an insurgent leader in Donetsk. “If the authorities in Kiev want a dialogue, they must come here. If we go to Kiev, they will arrest us.”

Asked if they would be willing to take part in discussions if the round table was held in the east, Pushilin told The Associated Press that “talks with Kiev authorities could only be about one thing: the recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic”.

Turchynov chaired the first in a series of round tables with spiritual leaders, lawmakers, government figures and regional officials as part of a peace plan crafted by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a security group that also includes Russia and the United States.

Ukraine right now is deeply divided between those in the west, who want closer ties with Europe, and those in the east, who have strong traditional and language ties with Russia.

Acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told participants they will be holding discussions across the country “in as many regions as possible”, but didn’t name any specific one.

Oleksandr Efremov, leader of the Party of Regions in the Ukrainian parliament, the support base of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, voiced hope that the discussions will be held in the east “where things are perceived in a different way”.

Efremov called on the government to withdraw its troops from the Donetsk region and urged authorities to understand that people are genuinely suspicious of the new government that came to power after Yanukovych fled to Russia in February.

The Ukrainian government, however, has said it will not stop its offensive to retake eastern cities now under the control of the separatists who declared independence Monday in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, home to 6.6 million people.

Kiev-appointed Donetsk governor Serhiy Taruta sought to strike a reconciliatory note, urging the government among other things to refrain from calling pro-Russia protesters “terrorists” and to dismantle the protest camp on Kiev’s Maidan square that led to Yanukovych’s departure.

That would send a message that Kiev treats all protesters from the east and west equally, Taruta said.

The OSCE road map aims to halt fighting between government forces and pro-Russia separatists in the east, and de-escalate tensions ahead of Ukraine’s May 25 presidential vote. It calls on all sides to refrain from violence, offers an amnesty for those involved in the unrest, and urges talks on decentralisation and the status of the Russian language.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebiynis lamented, however, that the OSCE plan does not specifically oblige Russia to do anything.

Even so, European officials applauded the start of the talks. The EU’s enlargement commissioner, Stefan Fule, welcomed the round table on his Twitter account, voicing hope the next meeting would take place in eastern Ukraine.

But that wouldn’t be enough for many of the insurgents.

“The government in Kiev does not want to listen to the people of Donetsk,” said Denis Patkovski, a pro-Russia militiaman in the eastern city of Slovyansk. “They just come here with their guns.”

Russia has strongly backed the OSCE road map while the United States, which says it’s worth a try, views its prospects for success with skepticism. Sawsan Chebli, a spokeswoman for German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said Ukraine’s acceptance of the round-table format was a step in the right direction, whether the pro-Russia separatists were invited or not.

The OSCE itself would not comment on the talks.

Ukraine and the West have accused Moscow of fomenting the unrest in eastern Ukraine, where insurgents declared independence for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Dozens have died in the scattershot fighting across the east. On Tuesday, the defence ministry said six soldiers were killed and nine wounded in a rebel ambush near the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region — the deadliest attack on the Ukrainian military since the offensive began last month.

Defence ministry spokesman Bohdan Senyk said about 30 gunmen lined both sides of a road and used rocket-propelled grenades to knock out military vehicles in a battle that raged for an hour. On Wednesday morning, AP journalists saw the charred carcasses of a Ukrainian armored personnel carrier and a truck at the clash site.

Defence Minister Mykhailo Koval claimed that the insurgents were being aided by Russian servicemen.

“Russia has waged an undeclared new-generation war in Ukraine. The neighboring country has unleashed a war using units of terrorists and saboteurs,” he said.

Russia has vehemently denied involvement.

In Donetsk, about 15 men with automatic weapons arrived at a military base Wednesday morning and demanded that the soldiers pledge allegiance to the self-proclaimed rebel Donetsk People’s Republic, said Viktoria Kushnir, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s National Guard. The men blocked the base’s gate with a truck but the servicemen eventually persuaded them to go, Kushnir said.

In Moscow, Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, said Wednesday that the Ukrainian authorities’ refusal to speak to their foes and the continuing military operation in the east will undermine the legitimacy of Ukraine’s May 25 presidential vote.

But in an important change, he added that the failure to hold it would be even worse.

“It’s hard to imagine that this election could be fully legitimate,” Naryshkin said on Rossiya 24 television. “But it’s obvious that the failure to hold the election would lead to an even sadder situation, so it’s necessary to choose the lesser evil.”

Moscow had previously called for postponing Ukraine’s presidential vote, saying it must be preceded by a constitutional reform that would turn Ukraine into a federation. It has recently taken a more conciliatory stance, apparently seeking to ease what has become the worst crisis in relations with the West since the Cold War.

The interim government had hoped that Ukraine would unite behind the new presidential election but insurgents in Luhansk and Donetsk have already said they won’t allow the presidential ballot to be held.

SOMA, Turkey — Hopes faded of finding more survivors in a coal mine in western Turkey on Wednesday, where 238 workers were confirmed killed and 120 more still feared to be trapped in what is likely to prove the nation’s worst ever industrial disaster.

Anger over the deadly fire at the mine about 480km southwest of Istanbul echoed across a country that has seen a decade of rapid economic growth but still suffers from one of the world’s worst workplace safety records. Opponents blamed Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government for ignoring repeated warnings about the safety of the country’s mines.

“We as a nation of 77 million are experiencing a very great pain,” Erdogan told a news conference after visiting the site, at which he gave the figures for those confirmed dead and still thought missing. But he appeared to turn defensive when asked whether sufficient precautions had been in place at the mine.

“Explosions like this in these mines happen all the time. It’s not like these don’t happen elsewhere in the world,” he said, reeling off a list of global mining accidents since 1862.

Fire knocked out power, and shut down ventilation shafts and elevators shortly after 3pm (1200 GMT) on Tuesday. After an all-night rescue effort, emergency workers pumped oxygen into the mine to try to keep those trapped alive. Thousands of family members and co-workers gathered outside the town’s hospital searching for information on their loved ones.

“We haven’t heard anything from any of them, not among the injured, not among the list of dead,” said one elderly woman, Sengul, whose two nephews worked in the mine along with the sons of two of her neighbours.

“It’s what people do here, risking their lives for two cents... They say one gallery in the mine has not been reached, but it’s almost been a day,” she said.

The fire broke out during a shift change, leading to uncertainty over the exact number of miners trapped. Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said late on Tuesday 787 workers were in the mine at the time.

Initial reports suggested an electrical fault caused the blaze but Mehmet Torun, a board member and former head of the Chamber of Mining Engineers who was at the scene, said a disused coal seam had heated up, expelling carbon monoxide through the mine’s tunnels and galleries.

“They are ventilating the shafts but carbon monoxide kills in three or five minutes,” he told Reuters by telephone.

“Unless we have a major miracle, we shouldn’t expect anyone to emerge alive at this point,” he said, pointing to an outside chance that workers may have found air pockets to survive.

Deadliest ever

The disaster highlighted Turkey’s poor record on worker safety and drew renewed opposition calls for an inquiry into a drop in safety standards at previously state-run mines. The International Labour Organisation ranked the EU candidate nation third worst in the world for worker deaths in 2012.

Erdogan earlier declared three days of national mourning and cancelled an official visit to Albania. President Abdullah Gul also cancelled a trip to China scheduled for Thursday in order to travel to Soma.

“We are heading towards this accident likely being the deadliest ever in Turkey,” Yildiz told reporters, adding that “hopes were dimming” of finding many more survivors.

A pall of smoke hung above the area and Yildiz said the fire was still burning underground, hampering the rescue operation.

Some 93 people were rescued, including several rescuers who had themselves become trapped or overcome by fumes and 85 were being treated for their injuries, Turkey’s disaster management agency AFAD said in an e-mail.

Protests

Freezer trucks and a cold storage warehouse usually used for food served as makeshift morgues as hospital facilities overflowed. Medical staff intermittently emerged from the hospital to read the names of survivors being treated inside, with families and fellow workers clamouring for information.

“This isn’t a huge city. Everyone has neighbours, relatives or friends injured, dead or still trapped. I am trying to prepare my family for the worst,” said Hasan Dogan, 27, watching TV news reports from a canteen set up outside the hospital.

Some 16,000 people from a population of 105,000 in the district of Soma work in the mining industry, according to Erkan Akcay, a local opposition politician. The district is no stranger to tragedies, but never before on this scale.

The words “For those who give a life for a handful of coal” are engraved on the entrance wall to the emergency clinic.

Teams of psychiatrists were being pulled together to help counsel the families of victims. Paramilitary police guarded the entrance to the mine to keep distressed relatives at a safe distance, as residents offered soup, water and bread.

“They haven’t brought any ambulances in such a long time that we’ve started to lose hope,” said Hatice Ersoy, 43, a woman in a headscarf sitting on a pavement outside the hospital.

Several hundred people chanted “Government: resign!” at Soma’s local government building as Erdogan visited the town.

Around 200 people briefly protested in front of the Istanbul headquarters of Soma Komur Isletmeleri, the operator of the mine. The company said in a brief statement late on Tuesday that there had been “a grave accident” caused by an explosion in a substation but gave few other details.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon on student protesters at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara who wanted to march on the energy ministry.

At Istanbul’s Taksim Square, two left-wing opposition newspaper vendors read out headlines to silent morning commuters. “Turkey is a graveyard for workers,” and “This wasn’t an accident, this was negligence.”

Poor record

Turkey’s rapid growth over the past decade has seen a construction boom and a scramble to meet soaring energy demand, with worker safety standards often failing to keep pace. It is a net importer of coal.

Its safety record in coal mining has been poor for decades, with its deadliest accident to date in 1992, when a gas blast killed 263 workers in the Black Sea province of Zonguldak.

The labour ministry said late on Tuesday its officials had carried out regular inspections at the Soma mine, most recently in March and that no irregularities had been detected.

But Hursit Gunes, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, said a previous request for a parliamentary inquiry into safety and working conditions at mines around Soma had been rejected by the ruling AK Party.

“I’m going to renew that parliamentary investigation demand today. If [the government] has been warned about this and they did nothing, then people will be angry, naturally. The opposition warned them. But there’s unbelievable lethargy on this issue,” Gunes told Reuters.

The ILO in 2012 said Turkey had the highest rate of worker deaths in Europe and the world’s third-highest. In the mining sector, 61 people died in 2012, according to the ILO’s latest statistics. Between 2002 and 2012, the death toll at Turkish mines totalled more than 1,000.

LONDON — The spread of a puzzling respiratory virus in the Middle East and beyond is not a global health emergency despite a recent spike in cases, the World Health Organisation said Wednesday.

The decision was made after a meeting of WHO's expert group on the Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS.

Since 2012, MERS has sickened more than 500 people and killed 145, mostly in the Middle East. The majority of cases have been in Saudi Arabia, although the disease has spread within the region and to Asia, North Africa, Europe and the United States.

MERS often starts with flu-like symptoms but can lead to pneumonia, breathing problems and in severe cases, kidney failure and death.

"Calling a global emergency in a world which has a lot of issues is a major act," said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, an assistant director-general of WHO, told reporters Wednesday. "You have to have really solid evidence to say this is a global emergency."

Fukuda said there wasn't yet proof of the virus' sustained transmission among people.

Last week, however, WHO did declare the world's widening polio outbreaks to be an international health emergency.

Some scientists said while MERS technically meets the criteria for a global health emergency, declaring it as such could confuse the public.

"People might think (WHO) is crying wolf because MERS is still primarily a problem in the Middle East," said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota who has worked in the Middle East. "But if one of those infected people gets on a plane and lands in London, Toronto, New York or Hong Kong and transmits to another 30 people, everyone will have a different view."

Some experts say the spread of MERS is worryingly similar to the 2003 global outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, which infected about 8,000 people in 2003, killing nearly 800. MERS is genetically related to SARS.

Scientists are unsure exactly how people are catching MERS but suspect the disease is linked to camels. WHO recommends that people avoid contact with the animals, skip drinking camel milk or using camel urine in traditional medicines and only eat camel meat that has been well cooked.

Dr. Clemens Wendtner, who treated a German MERS patient in Munich last year, said the current spread of MERS should not set off a global alarm. He was not part of the WHO meeting.

"I do not see an international threat or a pandemic (being caused) by MERS," he wrote in an email. He said the spread of MERS to humans was still exceptional and that the disease was mostly affecting animals.

WHO said its expert committee would reconvene in several weeks to consider any new MERS developments.

SOMA, Turkey – Rescuers battled Wednesday to reach hundreds of workers feared trapped after an explosion at a mine in western Turkey that has killed at least 205 people in one of the worst industrial disasters ever to hit the country.

As Turkey declared three days of national mourning for the victims, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said the toll could rise to exceed the 263 workers killed in the country's worst ever mining disaster.

"We are worried that human loss could increase," he told reporters.

"The problem is more serious than we thought. It is developing into an accident with the highest worker death toll Turkey has seen so far."

Yildiz said 205 miners had been confirmed dead after Tuesday's blast at the mine at Soma, in Manisa province.

He declined to say how many people remained trapped in the mine, although earlier reports said 787 workers were underground when the blast occurred.

Turkey's disaster management agency AFAD said 93 people had been rescued, 85 of them injured.

Explosions and cave-ins are common in Turkey, particularly in private mines where safety regulations are often flouted.

Turkey's worst mining accident happened in 1992 when 263 workers were killed in a gas explosion in a mine in Zonguldak.

Tuesday's explosion was believed to have been triggered by a faulty electrical transformer at around 1230 GMT Tuesday.

A security source told AFP that there were pockets in the mine, one of which was open so rescuers were able to reach the workers, but the second was blocked with workers trapped inside.

Hundreds of people gathered around the explosion site as rescuers brought out injured workers, who were coughing and struggling to breathe due to the dust.

Sena Isbiler, mother of one of the miners, stood on top of piles of wood, craning her neck to see who was being led out of the mine.

"I have been waiting for my son since early afternoon," she told AFP.

"I haven't heard anything about him yet."

Arum Unzar, a colleague of the missing miners said he had lost a friend previously "but this is enormous."

"All the victims are our friends," he said as he wept.

"We are a family and today that family is devastated. We have had very little news and when it does come it's very bad," he added.

- 'Tragic accident' -

Fire officials were trying to pump clean air into the mine shaft for those who remained trapped some two kilometres (one mile) below the surface and four kilometres from the entrance.

Injured people emerged from the collapsed mine, some walking, others being carried by rescue workers while being given oxygen, as security officers tried to keep ambulance routes clear.

Energy Minister Yildiz promised the government would "not turn a blind eye" to negligence. "We will do whatever necessary, including all administrative and legal steps," he said.

The mining company Soma Komur issued a statement saying it had taken maximum measures to ensure safety.

"The accident happened despite maximum safety measures and inspections, but we have been able to take prompt action."

- 'Hopes fading' -

Turkey's ministry of labour and social security said the mine was last inspected on March 17 and was found to comply with safety regulations.

But Oktay Berrin, a miner, said workers were not protected underground.

"There is no security in this mine," he told AFP.

"The unions are just puppets and our management only cares about money."

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was due to arrive in Soma on Wednesday after cancelling a trip to Albania.

Speaking in Ankara, the leader expressed his "heartfelt condolences" to the families of those who died.

"Some of the workers have been rescued and I hope we will be able to rescue the others," Erdogan said.

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul has cancelled a trip to China and will also travel to the scene of the disaster.

Yildiz told journalists in Soma that a team of 400 people were involved in the rescue effort and that the main cause of the deaths was carbon monoxide and dioxide poisoning.

He said fires and the risk of toxic carbon monoxide were hampering rescue efforts.

"I must say that our hopes about rescue efforts inside (the mine) are fading," he added.

The miners are all thought to have gas masks, but it was not clear how long they would last.

Vedat Didari, a professor of mining, told AFP that the biggest risk was the lack of oxygen.

"If the ceiling fans are not working, the workers could die within an hour," said Didari, from the Bulent Ecevit University in the city of Zonguldak.

Soma is one of the key centres for lignite coal mining in Turkey, a district with a population of around 100,000 where the mines and a lignite-fired thermal power plant are the main economic activity.

MOSCOW/KIEV — Russia cast doubt on the long-term future of the International Space Station, a showcase of post-Cold War cooperation, as it retaliated on Tuesday against US sanctions over Ukraine.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Moscow would reject a US request to prolong the orbiting station’s use beyond 2020 and bar Washington from using Russian-made rocket engines to launch military satellites.

Moscow took the action, which also included suspending operation of GPS satellite navigation system sites on its territory from June, in response to US plans to deny export licences for high-technology items that could help the Russian military.

“We are very concerned about continuing to develop high-tech projects with such an unreliable partner as the United States, which politicises everything,” Rogozin told a news conference.

Washington wants to keep the $100 billion, 15 nation space station project in use until at least 2024, four years beyond the previous target.

While six years away, the plan to part ways on a project which was supposed to end the “space race” underlines how relations between the former Cold War rivals have deteriorated since Russia annexed Ukraine in March.

Since the end of the US Space Shuttle project, Russian Soyuz spacecraft have been the only way astronauts can get to the space station, whose crews include both Americans and Russians.

At a time when Moscow is struggling to reform its accident-plagued space programme, Rogozin said US plans to deny export licences for some high-technology items were a blow to Russian industry. “These sanctions are out of place and inappropriate,” Rogozin said. “We have enough of our own problems.”

Moscow’s response would affect NK-33 and RD-180 engines which Russia supplies to the United States, Rogozin said. “We are ready to deliver these engines but on one condition that they will not be used to launch military satellites,” he said.

RD-180 engines are used to boost Atlas 5 rockets manufactured by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that holds a virtual monopoly on launching US military satellites.

Rogozin said Moscow was planning “strategic changes” in its space industry after 2020, and aims to use money and “intellectual resources” that now go to the space station for a “a project with more prospects”.

He suggested Russia could use the station without the United States, saying: “The Russian segment can exist independently from the American one. The US one cannot.”

The US space agency NASA is working with companies to develop space taxis with the goal of restoring US transport to the station by 2017, but the United States currently pays Russia more than $60 million per person to fly its astronauts up.

Rogozin said Russia will suspend the operation of 11 GPS sites on its territory from June and seek talks with Washington on opening similar sites in the United States for Russia’s own satellite navigation system, Glonass.

He threatened the permanent closure of the GPS sites in Russia if that is not agreed by September.

Rogozin said the suspension of the sites would not affect everyday operations of the GPS system in Russia, where it is used by millions of Russians for navigation on their smartphones and in their cars.

The upheaval in Ukraine — where the United States says Russia is backing separatists and the Kremlin accuses Washington of helping protesters to topple a Moscow-friendly president in February, has led to the worst East-West crisis since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

In addition to the high-tech sector sanctions, the United States has imposed visa bans and assets freezes on officials and lawmakers, and targeted companies with links to President Vladimir Putin. The European Union has also imposed sanctions.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Tuesday that the latest EU measures were an “exhausted, trite approach” that would only deepen discord and hamper efforts to defuse the crisis in Ukraine.

Separatist ambush 

Six Ukrainian soldiers were killed and eight wounded on Tuesday when their armoured column was ambushed by pro-Russian separatists near the eastern Ukrainian town of Kramatorsk, the Defence Ministry said.

It was the biggest single loss of life by the Ukrainian army since soldiers were sent into the mainly Russian-speaking east of the country to break up armed separatist groups who have seized control of towns and public buildings in a bid to further demands for autonomy.

The ministry, in a statement published on its website, said an armoured column came under fire as it approached a bridge near a village 20km from Kramatorsk, one of several hot spots in the region where the army has had only limited success against the separatists.

About 30 rebels, who had taken cover among bushes along a river, attacked with grenade-launchers and automatic weapons, immediately killing two soldiers and wounding three others, it said.

“In all, as a result of the prolonged fighting, 6 members of the armed forces were killed. Eight soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously,” it said.

Earlier on Tuesday Defence Minister Mikhailo Koval said a total of 9 servicemen had been killed so far in the “anti-terrorist” operation which has been directed mainly against rebels in the towns of Slaviansk and Mariupol.

The dead included 5 pilots, Koval said, who apparently died when their helicopters were downed by separatist fire.

LEER, South Sudan — Bodies stuffed in wells. Houses burned down. Children playing on military hardware. And infants showing the skeletal outlines of severe hunger.

These are the scenes from a remote part of South Sudan — Leer — where Doctors Without Borders has just begun feeding severely malnourished children about three months after the aid group’s hospital was destroyed in violence that has been ripping apart the country since December.

One child brought to the clinic by a mother hoping for life-saving aid instead died the next day. That and other scenes of desperation were recently filmed by an Associated Press journalist.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on Monday that he visited South Sudan this month in order to “sound the alarm about the violence and the risk of catastrophic famine”. Ban warned that if the fighting continues, half of South Sudan’s 12 million people will be displaced, starving or dead by year’s end.

Government troops led by President Salva Kiir and rebel forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar battled each other on Sunday, only two days after Kiir and Machar met in Ethiopia to sign a cease-fire deal, the second peace treaty of the conflict. The first one fell apart soon after it was signed.

More than 1.3 million people have fled their homes because of the violence. Many have spent months living in what people in this part of the world refer to as “the bush”, the untamed wild where dirty water and disease lie in wait.

People who fled Leer, a town of 20,000 in Unity state, are just starting to return to their homes, many of which are burned out or looted. Seasonal rains are starting to pour down, leaving families without a roof to cram in with neighbors or rough it in the rain.

“To be living in a place where you don’t even have a roof is awful,” said Sarah Maynard, a Doctors Without Borders project coordinator. “With the rains coming it will only get worse. People need help here.”

Doctors Without Borders re-opened its clinic doors last Thursday to a flood of residents seeking help for malaria, measles, diarrhea, respiratory tract infections — and hunger. The group screened 600 children and found 50 faced the most dire level of malnutrition.

Nyagaaw Biel Dhoar brought 2-year-old son Jacob Rit Wadaar to the clinic in the hopes that the medical personnel could save him. She tried to keep breastfeeding him as he lay dying in her arms, but it was too late. Jacob died the next morning.

World leaders like the UN secretary-general and US Secretary of State John Kerry both worked to get Kiir and Machar to agree to the latest cease-fire in part because the aid community says that if residents don’t return home this month and plant crops before the rains truly set in the country will have no food to eat.

“Hunger and malnutrition are already widespread. If this planting window is missed, there will be a real risk of famine. That is why we are calling for 30 days of tranquility backed by both sides. I am troubled by the accusations by both sides of breaches of the cease-fire already,” Ban told the Security Council.

Ban says South Sudan still needs $781 million for aid operations this year. A donor conference is being held in Norway in one week.

Violence has upturned the rhythm of daily life. Residents showed an Associated Press reporter how garbage and corpses fill one of Leer’s communal wells.

Myabani Nhial, a mother of 10, traded food staples like sorghum before the fighting broke out. Although her home and grain store has been reduced to a burned-out shell, she keeps returning to it in the hope of finding something that might have escaped the looting fighters and their fires.

“This was my home,” says Nhial. “It was burned by the soldiers. They killed three of my children and they took all the sorghum and whatever we had in our house. Now we are left to die without any food, water or shelter. They have taken away everything.”

LAGOS — Manned US aircraft were flying over Nigeria on Tuesday, searching for over 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram Islamists after Abuja dismissed a prisoner-swap offer from the militants.

“We have shared commercial satellite imagery with the Nigerians and are flying manned ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] assets over Nigeria with the government’s permission,” a senior US administration official said Monday.

The official declined to be named and it was not immediately clear what kind of aircraft were being deployed, nor where they were based.

Boko Haram’s leader said in a new video obtained by AFP Monday that the girls, whose abduction has sparked global outrage, would only be released if the government freed militant fighters from custody.

Abubakar Shekau made the claim in a 27-minute video, which apparently showed about 130 of the teenagers who were snatched from their school in the remote northeastern town of Chibok nearly a month ago.

The militant leader said the girls in the video had converted to Islam and all were shown in Muslim dress, reciting the first chapter of the Koran and praying at an undisclosed location.

Asked if the government would reject Shekau’s suggestion, Interior Minister Abba Moro told AFP: “Of course”.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said US intelligence experts were “combing through every detail of the video for clues that might help ongoing efforts to secure the release of the girls”.

Their disappearance has triggered global outrage, in part due to a social media campaign that has won the support of high-profile figures including US First Lady Michelle Obama, Pope Francis and Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai.

A total of 276 students were abducted on April 14 from Chibok, which has a sizeable Christian community. Police say 223 are still missing.

Nigeria’s government has been criticised for its slow response to the kidnapping, but has been forced into action as a result of international pressure.

President Goodluck Jonathan has accepted help from the United States, Britain, France, China and Israel, which have sent specialist teams to help in the search effort.

French President Francois Hollande has also called for a west Africa security summit to discuss the Boko Haram threat, which could be held as early as Saturday.

The United States and Britain have been invited, he said.

The latest footage shows the girls in black and grey full-length hijabs, sitting on scrubland near trees.

Three of them are shown being interviewed — two said they were Christian and had converted while one said she was Muslim.

All three pronounced their belief in Islam dispassionately to the camera, sometimes looking down at the ground and apparently under duress.

Most of the group behind them were seated cross-legged on the ground. The girls appeared calm and one said they had not been harmed.

There was no indication of when the video was taken, although the quality is better than on previous occasions and at one point an armed man is seen in shot with a hand-held video camera.

Shekau does not appear in the same scene. Instead, he is seen dressed in combat fatigues, carrying an automatic weapon in front of a lime-green canvas backdrop.

‘We have liberated them’ 

Speaking in his native Hausa language as well as Arabic, he restated his claim of responsibility for the kidnappings, and said the girls were converting to Islam.

“These girls, these girls you occupy yourselves with... we have indeed liberated them. These girls have become Muslims,” he said.

“There are still others who have not converted and are holding on to your belief. There are many of them,” he added.

“Only Allah knows how many women we are holding, the infidels who Allah commands us to hold.”

On the prisoner release, Shekau said Boko Haram’s brothers in arms had been held in prison for up to five years and suggested that the girls would be released if the fighters were freed.

“We will never release them [the girls] until after you release our brethren,” he said.

Boko Haram has been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north since 2009, attacking schools teaching a “Western” curriculum, churches and government targets.

Civilians, though, have borne the brunt of recent violence, with more than 1,500 killed this year alone while tens of thousands have been displaced after their homes and businesses were razed.

Boko Haram has used kidnapping of women and young girls in the past, and Shekau indicated that more were being held. Eleven girls were abducted from the Gwoza area of Borno state on May 4.

Jonathan has previously said that he believed the kidnapped students were still in Nigeria and would be freed soon.

There have been fears that the girls may have been taken into neighbouring Chad or Cameroon, from where Boko Haram is said to have launched attacks in the northeast and may have camps.