Crane collapses into a furnace at Turkish steel group Habas, killing seventeen workers
Thirteen people were also injured in the blast in Aliağa, prosecutors have detained six people and unions point to earlier accidents.
Seventeen workers were killed on Monday afternoon in a powerful explosion at a steel plant of the Habas group in Aliağa, about sixty kilometres north of Izmir. According to the provincial authorities, an overhead crane lifting a replacement boiler gave way and fell into an electric arc furnace used for casting liquid steel, Euronews reports. Thirteen people were injured, two of them seriously, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said after a cabinet meeting.
Witnesses told AFP the blast felt like an earthquake or a bomb. Rescue teams spent hours removing a collapsed platform to reach trapped workers, Izmir mayor Cemil Tugay said. Erdoğan promised to establish whether there had been negligence and who was responsible. According to Turkish public broadcaster TRT, six people have been detained and a criminal investigation is under way, 1news.az reports.
Habas is a privately owned group and one of Turkey's largest steel producers. Workers' organisations point to a long record of safety problems. According to the newspaper Evrensel, at least eleven workers have died at the plant over the past decade, and the Labour Party says it is the third fatal accident in three weeks. The company declined to answer questions, according to AFP. The pro-Kurdish DEM party is demanding a transparent investigation.