According to reports, nineteen others are still missing and feared dead.
The Grasberg mine, the world’s second largest copper mine, has an estimated 24,000 employees.
A tunnel collapsed there last week when 38 workers were doing undergoing safety training. Ten injured miners were rescued.
In 2011, workers staged a three-month protest asking for better pay. The miners went back to work after negotiating a pay rise of almost 40 percent.
“I am deeply saddened and disturbed by this event,” Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc’s CEO Richard Adkerson said in a statement. “Out focus continues to be continuing efforts to gain access to the victims still buried at the accident, carried out as quickly as can be done safely.”
Image: © Alfindra Primaldhi
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