<p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Turkey's president has been criticised for linking the deaths of 41 miners in an explosion to "destiny", saying such accidents "will always be".</b></span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments triggered protests in Istanbul, with some describing the accident in northern Turkey as "a massacre".</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Relatives of the dead claim they reported being able to smell gas for more than a week.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Friday's blast at the facility on the Black Sea also left 28 injured.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Mr Erdogan made the remarks during a visit to the site in Bartin province on Saturday.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">"We are people who believe in the plan of destiny," he told reporters, as he was surrounded by rescue workers. Such accidents "will always be, we need to know that too", he added.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">But the comment angered many. Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu demanded to know "in which century we are living?".</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">"Why [do] the mine accidents happen only in Turkey?" he said.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Emin Koramaz, who leads the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, dismissed the idea the blast could be described as an accident, alleging on Twitter that the miners had been sent "hundreds of metres underground without taking the necessary precautions, without inspection and without creating safe conditions".</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">The official cause of the blast is not yet known. Authorities said Turkish prosecutors have launched an investigation into the cause of the explosion, with preliminary findings suggesting it was caused by firedamp, a term referring to methane forming an explosive mixture in coal mines.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Angry families suspect gas may have played a role. The father of a man in his early 20s who died in the explosion told Pakistan's Associated Press that his son had also reported smelling gas for 10 days.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">In the village of Makaraci, which lost four men, a tearful woman told Mr Erdogan at her brother's funeral: "President, my brother knew, he said there was a gas leak 10, 15 days ago. He said 'they will explode us soon'. How come it's negligence? He said 'they will explode us here'... He knew it."</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">According to news agency AFP, after a moment of silence, Mr Erdogan replied: "Sorry for your loss, may Allah give patience."</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Around 110 people were in the mine at the time of Friday's blast, almost half of them at more than 300m (984ft) deep. Some 58 people working in the mine when the blast went off were rescued or got out by themselves.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">The mine belongs to the state-owned Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises.</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Turkey witnessed its deadliest coal mining disaster in 2014, when 301 people died after a blast in the western town of Soma. BBC</span><br></p><p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">bnbd24/kh</span><br></p>