18 dead, 8 injured in explosion at illegal India coal mine, police say

At least 18 people died on Thursday after an explosion ripped through an illegal coal mine in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, officials said.“During the course of the rescue operation, a total of 18 dead bodies have been recovered from the site of the explosion,” local police said in a statement.Eight other people were injured, said Manish Kumar, top official in East Jaintia Hills district where the explosion happened.Rescuers were digging through the rubble at the site to find out if more miners were trapped inside but the operations halted at sundown.Kumar said it was an “illegal rathole mine” and that authorities were awaiting staff from state and federal disaster management agencies to resume the search on Friday morning.Rathole mines are deep vertical shafts dug mostly into hillsides that branch out into narrow tunnels to reach and retrieve coal and other minerals.A federal environment court banned rathole mining in Meghalaya in 2014 after local communities complained it was polluting water sources and putting lives at risk.