Forty-seven miners were working  80-meters below ground in that mine.

Officails say 30 miners have been under treatment in area hospitals.

Authorities ended their search and rescue efforts about five hours after the explosion.

The bodies of 12 miners were pulled from the rubble while five workers died in the hospital.

Dursunbey was the site of a 2006 disaster in which 13 miners were killed.

The latest explosion comes two months after 19 workers were killed in a coal mine near the city of Bursa.

There was a collapse in that mine after a dynamite explosion.

Mining disasters are common in Turkey.

The worst disaster occured in 1992, when 263 workeres were killed at Zonguldak on the Black Sea.