“Rescue workers lost contact with 10 people” at the Zofiowka mine, Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa (JSW) said in a statement. The coal mine is located at Jastrzębie-Zdrój in southern Poland, about 307 kilometers southwest of the capital, Warsaw. According to the mining company, an earthquake at a depth of 900 meters occurred at 03:40 am. This resulted in a large methane leak.

52 workers were near the earthquake site. 42 of them managed to return to the surface unharmed. Twelve teams of rescue workers participated in the relief effort. According to JSW, they will have to travel 2,300 to 2,500 meters to reach the site where the missing miners are likely to be.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki described the information on the accident as “shattering”. In 2018, five miners were killed at the same mine.

This is the second accident at the JSW coal mine in three days. An explosion occurred at a mine in New York on Wednesday. Five people were killed as a result. Seven workers are missing. Nothing is known about their situation yet. The rescue operation was halted on Friday because it was deemed “too dangerous” for rescuers. Twenty people were taken to hospital after the accident, six of them suffered serious burns.

Poland, which still relies on coal for about 70 percent of its energy, has suffered other mining accidents in recent years. In March 2021, two miners died and two others were injured in an accident at the Myslowice-Wesola mine in the south of the country.

In 2021, nearly 80,000 people worked in the mining sector in Poland.