ANKARA, Sept 8 (AFP) - Rescue workers prepared Wednesday to pull out 22 workers, all alive and well, from a copper mine tunnel 148 meters (490 feet) underground where they were trapped by a massive fire, company officials said.
Five men have already been extracted from the huge tunnel and were being treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation, a spokesman for the STFA construction firm said.
"Their lives are not in danger," he said.
Two other workers who had earlier managed to flee the flames at the mine in Kure, 350 km (220 miles) north of Ankara, described the blaze as huge and said it was apparently sparked during welding work.
Rescue officials, who extinguished the blaze and set up emergency ventilation to clear the air, said they were communicating with the workers through a ventilation shaft.
They plan to pull the remaining men out through this shaft by lowering a cable and a cab, said a spokesman for STFA.
"We managed to send them water and evacuation operations began as soon as the fire was put out," he told AFP.
Alper Tanrisever, the sub-governor of the town in the northern Turkish highlands, earlier told Anatolia news agency that about 30 workers were in the tunnel when the fire broke out.
Anatolia said ambulances were rushed to the site, which belongs to Turkey`s mining giant, Etibank.
STFA, one of the country`s top building companies, was sub-contracted by Etibank to build the tunnel, which the spokesman described as "large enough for trucks to drive through," at the site where construction began three years ago.