QUETTA, July 30 (Reuters) - An explosion buried parts of a mining complex and killed at least 34 miners in Pakistan's Balochistan province on Thursday, a Pakistani official said.
A rescue operation is still underway to find and recover the remaining two trapped miners, said Muhammad Fahad, director of operations for the Provincial Disaster Management Authority.
Shoaib Nosherwani, Balochistan's minister for mines and mineral development, earlier told Reuters that 36 people were in the collapsed part of the complex at the time of the explosion.
Rescue efforts were under way at a depth of 4,000 feet (1,219 meters), said Muhammad Atif, the chief inspector of mines in the province.
Abdul Ghani Baloch, a senior government mining official in the region, said: "Two mines close to each other were damaged in a powerful methane gas explosion."
The explosion occurred in Sorange, a remote area near the provincial capital Quetta.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta; Editing by Rick Noack, Susan Fenton, Rod Nickel and Stephen Coates)
