The director of a mining company which was managing a gold mine where a massive landslide left nine workers missing, has been detained by authorities in Turkey.
Workers were left trapped under rubble after the landslide engulfed the Copler mine in Ilic in Turkey's mountainous Erzincan province on Tuesday.
Interior minister Ali Yerlikaya previously said the landslide involved a mound of soil extracted from the mine, run by the company Anagold Madencilik.
Cengiz Demirci, Turkey director and senior vice-president of operations at the Denver-based SSR Mining, Anagold's parent company, was detained on Sunday morning.
Earlier this week, authorities detained eight other Copler mine employees as part of the investigation into the disaster. Six of the employees were formally arrested.
Hundreds of search and rescue personnel are still looking for the missing workers and Turkey's Environment Ministry announced on Saturday it was cancelling Anagold's environmental permit and licence.
Experts warned the landslide could be an environmental hazard as the soil was laced with dangerous substances, such as cyanide, used in gold extraction.
They said it may affect the nearby Euphrates River, which stretches across Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
The ministry closed down a stream leading to the river to prevent water pollution.
In 2020, the same mine was shut down following a cyanide leak into the Euphrates, roughly two miles away.
It reopened two years later after the company was fined and a clean-up operation was completed.
Shares at SSR Mining plummeted more than 50 per cent in the wake of Tuesday's disaster.
