Grief And Anger As Turkey Buries Dead Miners

By Robert Nisbet, Europe Correspondent

We watched a logjam of grief, as they filled a field with the bodies of those killed in the Turkish mine disaster.

Rows of graves were dug in what has now been called the Martyr's Cemetery, each hole separated by just a foot of earth.

The families say the men died shoulder-to-shoulder in the complex and should be laid to rest in the same way.

Ninety miners are due to be buried here, but many suspect that is a conservative estimate.

The suspicion of those we talked to is that the government and the mine company are lying about the death toll, because they are to blame for the tragedy.

People carry the coffin of a miner who died in a fire at a coal mine, draped with a Turkish flag, during his funeral at a cemetery in Soma, a district in Turkey's western province of Manisa

A coffin draped in the Turkish flag is carried toward a grave in Soma

Abdullah Erdal, 21, has lost four friends in the mine.

He told us: "We are angry, with both the private mining companies and the government, because they did not have proper control.

"We are young, but we have been told that when mines belonged to the state they were better managed.

"Workers had more rights. But with the private sector, salaries are low and security is lax."

Hulya Bilgen taught many of the victims, and her anger is barely concealed.

People mourn during the funeral of a miner who died in a fire at a coal mine, at a cemetery in Soma, a district in Turkey's western province of Manisa

Mourners weep beside one of 90 graves dug at the "Martyr's Cemetery"

"I am sad, so sad. Young bodies are now in the ground for a few pieces of coal. Our future has been destroyed. It is a massacre. It is mass murder," she said.

But for the most part the scene at the cemetery was just of raw grief.

Hoarse from her lament, the mother of Ugur Colak, 26, slumped at his grave.

She cried: "I am burning! I am burning! Why has this happened to us?"

Her two-year-old grandson cannot possibly understand the manner of his father's death, but watching his family convulsed by grief, he too breaks down.

That proves too much for the many others gathered around the grave, including this reporter, who follow suit.

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