On Tuesday, around 700 workers were trapped in a lignite mine in Soma, a city in the Manisa province of Turkey, after an explosion. Hacktivists from the RedHack are blaming the authorities for the incident, and have defaced the official website of the Soma Municipality.
Sendika reports that 256 people have already died, and expects the number to rise significantly. The Justice and Development Party (JDP)-led government has deployed military and police forces to the area in an effort to prevent the true death toll from leaking out, according to the publication.
The cause of the accident has not yet been reported, but some believe the accident was caused by an explosion in the control room or one of the mine's transformers. In any case, mining groups highlight the fact that privatization and unskilled labor have made the Soma mine an unsafe workplace.
Hackers from the Turkish group RedHack managed to deface the Soma Municipality website (at the domain soma.bel.tr) “in protest of the deaths from the explosion.”
At the time of writing, the website has been restored.
