Alex Trelinski
THREE men died on Thursday after a mine shaft collapsed at a Barcelona province potash mine.
Emergency services were alerted about an incident at the facility in Suria shortly before 9.00 am.
Early reports suggested the men died some 900 metres below ground and that no other workers were trapped.
No further details have been released- short of confirmation of the three deaths by the regional firefighting department.
The potash mine is the largest in Catalunya and is operated by ICL Iberia, who said the site had been evacuated.
The mine has a shaft built over nine years that runs for over five kilometres.
Two workers died at the Suria mine in 2013 when part of a roof gave way while they were performing maintenance work on an extraction machine.
Suria is a municipality of just over 5,000 inhabitants some 70 kilometres from Barcelona, with mining the area’s main industry for many years.
