More than 50 miners were in the mine when three big explosions triggered by methane gas ripped through the caverns.
“Forty-five miners have died. We have retrieved 25 bodies so far,” Aslam Bizenjo, provincial irrigation minister, told the provincial assembly.
Officials said the chances of finding the trapped workers alive were very slim because of a fire, which had consumed all the oxygen. Witnesses said the bodies had severe burns from the huge fire.
The mine in the Sorrange area, some 35 kilometres from the provincial capital, Quetta, is owned by the state-run Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation and was leased to a contractor.
Mohammad Iftikhar, chief inspector of mines in the region, said the contactor had been asked to shut down the mine two weeks ago because of an excessive accumulation of methane gas.
Such explosions are not uncommon in coal mines in Pakistan, most of which are located in Balochistan and neighbouring Sindh, where safety measures can be lax.
The country has huge coal reserves estimated at more than 184 billion tonnes. It produces four million tonnes of coal annually, most of which is consumed by brick-making kilns.
Speaking at a news conference alongside India’s Prime Minister Manmoham Singh, Obama said that while both India and Pakistan have an interest in reducing tensions in the region, the US, “cannot impose a solution to these problems.”
“We are happy to play any role the parties think is appropriate,” he said.
The conflict over Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region where militants have sought independence from India or incorporation with Pakistan, has been the main source of friction between the neighbours since they won independence from Britain in 1947.
Pakistan has frequently sought outside intervention to resolve it but India vehemently opposes such involvement, and the United States has traditionally stayed above the fray. Obama declined to veer from that stance.
Singh said that while he believes a strong, moderate Pakistan is in the interest of India and the wider region, India can’t engage in talks as long as Pakistan’s “terror machine is as active as ever before.” However, he deflected a reporter’s question about whether he would call Pakistan a terrorist state.
Singh is seen as a driving force behind Indian efforts to make peace with Pakistan. He called off peace talks following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by allegedly by Pakistan-linked militants, but was generally restrained in his reaction and never threatened military retaliation. The two countries have resumed periodic “trust-building” talks between foreign ministers and foreign secretaries in recent months.
Obama’s three-day stop in India is the longest amount of time he’s spent in a foreign country since taking office.
The US president praised the relationship between the US and India as one of the “defining partnerships of the 21st century.” He and Singh said they would co-host an international education summit next year and said the US Department of Homeland Security and India’s Ministry of Home Affairs would collaborate to combat terrorism by improving security at airports and seaports.
Obama also said the US will continue to share intelligence with India. And Singh said his country would establish new centres to focus more attention on the issues of nuclear proliferation and disease.
The leaders also reaffirmed their pledges of newfound economic cooperation, including moves by the United States to ease export controls affecting trade between the world’s two largest democracies.
Speaking to the sensitivity about high unemployment in the US, Singh said at one point that his country “is not in the business of stealing jobs from America.”
Obama said in response to a question: “I don’t think India is emerging. It has emerged.”
Obama’s final day in India began with a grand welcome ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the palatial residence of India’s president. Guards on horseback led Obama’s limousine up the red clay driveway leading to the residence, where Obama was greeted by Indian dignitaries. He stood with his hand on his heart as a military band played the US national anthem.
Following the arrival ceremony, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama placed a wreath at Raj Ghat, a memorial to Mohandas Gandhi. As a sign of respect, the Obamas removed their shoes before placing a large white wreath on a flower-covered tablet in front of an eternal flame.
Later Monday, Obama planned to speak to the Indian Parliament, with announcements expected on counterterrorism, regional security, clean energy, climate change and economic growth.
Hanging over Obama’s 10-day trip to Asia are heavy election losses at home. On Sunday, Obama promised to make “midcourse corrections” to reinvigorate his embattled domestic agenda in the face of a testier American public and more combative Congress.
Domestic politics came up not in response to a question from a Washington reporter but rather an Indian college student, who told Obama: “It seems that the American people have asked for a change.”
The president agreed that people vented their frustration about the economy by sacking many incumbents.
A “healthy thing,” he said, even though his Democratic Party suffered, losing control of one of the chambers in Congress. He said he would not retreat on spending money for energy and education, and offered no specific policy changes.
While talking to media representatives in Lahore, Gilani said the government will take action wherever its writ was challenged and that the government had the ability to counter terrorism in an effective way.
The prime minister appreciated the remarks made by the Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in which he said that there was no danger to the current system.
Answering a question, Gilani said he had ordered the Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee to resolve the water issue between Punjab and Irsa.
“To succeed, we must face the world as it is,” the document states, turning the page on Bush-era dreams of remaking the global order with American might and recognizing the increasing global engagement of Russia and the emergence of rising powers like China and India.
The document also contains warnings for Iran and North Korea, focuses on homegrown extremists who turn to Islamic radicalism in America and says the most serious threats to Americans are posed by nuclear proliferation.
The new doctrine illustrates an evolution of Obama's pro-engagement policies after 16 months in power, a period that brought the idealism of his election campaign into conflict with the harsh realities of geopolitics.
It describes a world thick with evolving threats and seeks to reframe US foreign policy after two bloody wars and a crippling global financial crisis.
It projects a tough, hard-nosed assessment of American interests and the use of US power, and lays out a dizzying array of threats from cyberwarfare to health epidemics to ethnic wars to inequality.
Obama commits to using the sweeping range of foreign policy tools, including diplomacy, economic renewal, development aid, military might and education.
It calls for tough engagement “without illusion” with US foes like Iran and North Korea, but warns they face deepening isolation if they continue to spurn US advances and do not bow to pressure to throw open their nuclear programs.
The document also preserves the US right to launch unilateral military action, but does so in more restrictive terms than those used by the former Bush administration.
It also seeks to widen the scope of US foreign policy, which became dominated by a doctrinaire “war on terror” following the September 11 attacks in 2001, and led to the war in Iraq, after the invasion of Afghanistan.
“We will always seek to delegitimize the use of terrorism and to isolate those who carry it out,” said the document, the product of intense internal deliberations during the 16 months of the Obama administration.
“Yet this is not a global war against a tactic, terrorism or a religion, Islam.
“We are at war with a specific network, al-Qaeda, and its terrorist affiliates who support efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners.”
In his final national security strategy in 2006, Bush targeted terrorism as a concept more specifically, declaring boldly “the war on terror is not over.”
Obama's document appears to water down the concept of preemptive war favored by the Bush administration, but preserves the option for a US president to deploy military might unilaterally.
It says Washington will “adhere to standards that govern the use of force.”
"We will also outline a clear mandate and specific objectives and thoroughly consider the consequences , intended and unintended, of our actions.”
White House national security adviser James Jones and CIA Director Leon Panetta delivered that message to Islamabad last week, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
As first reported by the Los Angeles Times, the high-ranking US delegation presented the Pakistanis with evidence they believe proves that Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad was trained and funded by the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP, as the Pakistani Taliban are known. Shahzad is accused of attempting to ignite what turned out to be a poorly constructed car bomb in Times Square.
The evidence also showed that two TTP members escorted Shahzad to a training base in the lawless tribal area of Waziristan, where he received some instruction in how to build explosives, the US official said.
Pakistani authorities have already detained two suspects thought to be those TTP escorts, the official said. The US now expects to see Pakistan carry out further independent counterterrorist operations and quietly increase other unspecified cooperation with the Americans, the official said.
The visiting delegation reminded Pakistani leaders that President Barack Obama had sent them a letter in November, asking for a tougher crackdown against al-Qaida and its affiliates like the TTP, the official said.
So far, many US officials have rated Pakistan's progress on that front as mixed because Pakistan has maintained a detente with some of the al-Qaeda affiliates that operate in its frontier provinces, like the Haqqani network.
The official said those in the delegation to Pakistan were hopeful that the Shahzad case may spell the difference because the US is asking Pakistan to crack down on a group that is a sworn enemy of Islamabad.
The TTP have launched a series of bloody bombings against Pakistani government targets and civilians over the past year.
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