Rescuers are continuing their efforts Wednesday to save at least 18 miners trapped underground in central Turkey.
As of Wednesday, emergency crew pumped out 11,000 tons of water to bring down water level underground, local NTV news channel reported.
"The pump we have newly set up has started to yield result and the water level is falling. Not as quickly as we want but it is falling," Energy Minister Taner Yildiz told reporters early Wednesday on the scene of the accident near the Ermenek town in Karaman province.
Hopes are dimming as there has been no contact with the miners since Tuesday, when one gallery was unexpected flooded. Yildiz, the minister, said rescuers are still looking for the source of the flooding.
A total of 34 workers were underground at the time of the accident, but 16 have since been rescued, two suffering injuries.
The trapped miners might have been drowned, an official of the mine told NTV on Tuesday.
"We are pumping the water to rescue them. There is 50 meters of water, 350 meters underground. The masks can resist for two hours. There are two places where they can escape," Uyar said. "But they may have drowned, because the water flooded the gallery suddenly."
Inspectors detected some irregularities at the mine in June, but none of them required a shut-down, Labor Minister Faruk Celik said.
More than 301 workers were killed at a coal mine blast in May, 2014 in Soma district of Manisa province. It is considered one of the worst coal mine disasters in the nation's history.