MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – In early 2022, the Mexican government will begin with the bodies of dozens of coal miners who died more than a decade ago in one of the country’s worst mining disasters, an official said Friday.
Only two bodies were discovered after the 2006 explosion at the Pasta de Conchos mine in the northern state of Coahuila. Sixty-five men were killed and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged to hand over the bodies of the other victims.
The first excavations of the mine will begin until September 2021 after an analysis of the basement, said Manuel Bartlett, head of the CFE’s electrical commission leading the effort.
“We are confident that direct studies will begin in the first quarter of 2022 and end in August 2024,” Bartlett once concluded through the miners’ widows.
López Obrador, speaking at the same event, said he would urge the procedure to move as fast as you can imagine while remaining safe for rescuers and provide reparations to the families of the victims.
Mexico Group, which operated the mine, argued that the crisis was an unfortunate accident and transferred the site’s concession to the government this year.
(Report via Sharay Angulo, Noe Torres and Daina Beth Solomon; edited through Grant McCool)
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