At least 19 miners were killed and 29 others feared dead after explosions triggered a collapse in a coal mine in Balochistan province on Sunday, officials said.
It would be "a miracle" if the 29 missing survived, one official said. A total of 48 miners were working around 1,200 metres (3,900 feet) underground at the time. The mine in the far-flung Sorange district of the insurgency-torn south-western province was poorly ventilated, allowing poisonous gases to accumulate and cause the three blasts, officials said.
Mohammad Iftikhar, provincial chief inspector of mines, told AFP that rescue workers had retrieved ten bodies from the mine, which had previously been ordered to stop operating.
"They had severe burns, which means that the blasts also caused a fire," he said. "We are trying our best to save the others."
He had earlier said the victims died of suffocation. But Balochistan's home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani said of the missing: "They may luckily receive oxygen but it will be a miracle if they survived."
Balochistan secretary of Mines and Minerals Mushtaq Raisani earlier told reporters the tricky rescue operation could take two days. "There is a huge quantity of methane gas inside the mine," he warned.
Raisani said rescue work, which was postponed earlier because some of the emergency crew had been left unconscious by the noxious fumes, had resumed and military experts and engineers had been called in to help. "They are removing debris and are trying to clear the way to move forward but we are not able to move forward," he said, adding that the mine operators had ignored previous warnings to stop work at the site.
The mine is run by the state-owned Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation and officials said they will launch an investigation against those responsible for the "criminal act" of ignoring previous warnings to stop mining.