The incident occurred around noon at a coal mine near the Pamuklu village in the the Central Anatolian province of Karaman's Ermenek district on Oct. 28. Rescue teams and ambulances have been dispatched to the area, soon after the incident occurred when water that had accumulated underground flooded a gallery, Karaman Governor Murat Koca told Anadolu Agency, Hurriyet Daily reports.“Over 40 workers were in the mine at the time of the incident, when there was a problem in one gallery. The other workers left the mine but 20 miners were left working in the flooded gallery,” Koca said.‘They might have drowned’An official from the mine later updated the number of trapped miners as 18. He added that those who remained may have drowned. “We are pumping the water to rescue them. There is 50 meters of water, 350 meters underground. The masks can resist for two hours. There are two places where they can escape. But they may have drowned, because the water flooded [the gallery] suddenly,” Şahin Uyar told private broadcaster NTV.Energy Minister Taner Yıldız, Labor Minister Faruk Çelik and Transport Minister Lütfi Elvan have arrived in Ermenek to observe the rescue operations at the mine. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has also sent representatives to the site, headed by the party's General Secretary Gürsel Tekin."Only one pump is working to discharge the water, but it is not enough. A second pump has just been assembled," Yıldız told reporters in front of the mine in the evening. "The water level in the flooded mine is continuing to rise and it increases a meter every two hours," he added.Yıldız released another statement at 3 a.m. on Oct. 29, heralding that the water level in the mine started to decrease almost 15 hours after the incident. "Approximately, 11,000 cubic metre of water flooded the mine," he said, as trapped miners remained below the level of detected water.Labor Minister Faruk Çelik said that eight errors were found during the June inspections in the mine. "None of them required a shut-down," he noted, stressing that the source of the water that flooded the mine has not been discovered yet. "The owner of the business is responsible here," he stated."This is the third flooding in the mine," said a miner who survived told Anadolu Agency, blaming the company. "It wouldn't happen if necessary precautions were taken," he claimed.Gov't cancels Republic Day celebrations over 'sorrow'Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay announced late Oct. 28 that the Republic Day celebrations scheduled for Oct. 29 have been cancelled because of the accident.In his Republic Day message, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu voiced the country's sorrow. "I hope our workers in the coal mine will return to their families safe and sound by using all means of our state and our nation," he said, labelling the incident as "a workplace accident."The Republican People's Party (CHP) chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, on the other hand, criticized the government over the incident. "You insist on negligence and we insist that death is not in the nature [of mining]. You still didn't take your lesson," he said in a tweet late Oct. 28.Turkey was hit by its worst ever mining accident in May this year in the western city of Soma, where 301 workers died after a fire broke out inside the mine’s galleries.Bakudaily.Az