Smoke was hampering rescue efforts after a blaze at an Indonesian gold mine in which at least 12 people, mostly illegal miners, are feared to have died, an official said.
Four people are confirmed to have suffocated while eight more who are still trapped in the shafts are also believed dead, said Dohar Siregar, corporate secretary of state mining firm Aneka Tambang (Antam). The firm denied reports in several newspapers which said the victims were asphyxiated by fumes from old tyres, which were allegedly set ablaze by mining company officials to flush out the illegal workers.
Siregar said rescuers had not yet been able to reach the spot where the eight illegal miners are believed to be. He added that there was little hope they had survived in the shafts after being trapped for such a long time.
"There's still smoke and there may be poisonous gas. We don't want to add more fatalities," he said.
One of the four people confirmed dead in the fire is an Antam worker.
He said an inquiry into the cause of the blaze was under way and denied press reports that Antam staff had started it deliberately. "We wouldn't have set a fire that will hurt our own people," Siregar said.
Illegal mining is rampant in resource-rich Indonesia and fatalities are common. The Jakarta Post said 66 miners had been killed at Mount Pongkor alone since 1997. The gold mine is 45 kilometers west of Bogor, a town just south of Jakarta.
Bogor's district police chief, M. Taufik, was quoted by Detikcom online news service as saying that only nine other people had been working inside the shafts at the time of the blaze.
Antam extracts about four or five tons of gold annually from Mount Pongkor, which Siregar said had enough deposits to last another 12 to 15 years.
In January one person was killed and four were injured when police opened fire to disperse illegal miners occupying a gold mine operated by Australian firm Newcrest, on the eastern island of Halmahera.
Illegal mining is one of many problems plaguing foreign firms in the mining sector. Exploration has come to a virtual halt across the vast Indonesian archipelago because of security and legal concerns.
An annual industry survey published last November said Indonesia could become a world-class mining country but new investors were steering clear because of legal uncertainties and red tape. It cited illegal mining as one of the problems preventing them from investing.