SOFIA, Bulgaria, March 7 (UPI) -- Miners are refusing to work in a coal mine in southwestern Bulgaria after a methane gas explosion Monday injured 19 miners, seven of them seriously, media said.
Four miners were in critical condition Wednesday in a hospital in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, where they were moved after the explosion in the Oranovo lignite mine near the town of Simitli, the Bulgarian news agency Focus said.
Three of the four miners critically injured were operated upon in Sofia's Pirogov emergency clinic and their conditions are touch and go, chief surgeon Spas Spaskov said.
Focus reported many miners consider the Oranovo mine still unsafe and refuse to go underground to work in the pits.
The news agency quoted unidentified miners as saying another incident could occur any time.
But Bulgarian authorities said special teams had isolated the area some 660 feet underground where the methane gas exploded. Nikolay Mavrodiev, head of the state-run Labor Inspectorate in the town of Blagoevgrad, said the Oranovo mine had been rendered safe, Focus said.
