ISLAMABAD: Five people were arrested following Turkey's mining disaster last Tuesday in the western town of Soma, which killed 301 people.
Soma Security chief Hilmi Kazik was arrested on Monday after Soma Coal Mining Company operating manager Akin Celik, engineers Yalcin Erdogan and Ertan Ersoy, and security chief Yasin Kurnaz were taken into custody on Sunday following a court hearing, Anadolu news agency reported.
The arrests came after 25 people, company executives included, were detained and questioned. They are accused of "causing the reckless killing of more than one person."
Prosecutor Bekir Sahiner said on Sunday that, according to a preliminary primary report on the incident, a malfunction of an electrical transformer did not cause the May 13 disaster, as had been speculated earlier.
Rescue operations in the mine ended on Saturday after the bodies of the last two miners trapped underground were found, bringing the total of number of fatalities to 301. This marks the deadliest mining incident in Turkey's history as it surpasses the death toll of a firedamp explosion that killed 263 miners in Zonguldak in 1992.
Dozens of prosecutors have been assigned to oversee post- mortem examinations.
More than 480 workers survived the Soma disaster.
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