In a development rescuers themselves described as extraordinary, a worker was pulled out alive on Thursday from the site of a collapsed marble mine in Rustam tehsil of Mardan district, more than two weeks after the disaster first struck on March 31. Rescue 1122 said the man was recovered from a tunnel at the site and shifted to Mardan Medical Complex for treatment.
The collapse happened in the Nangabad area during mining operations, with early official accounts saying a blast triggered a landslide or cave-in that buried labourers under debris. Initial rescue efforts involved ambulances, excavators and dozens of emergency workers racing to reach those trapped in the mine.
What makes Thursday’s rescue so striking is the timeline. According to Rescue 1122’s account carried by local media, the worker was found 16 days after the collapse, a survival story that few at the site could realistically have expected by this stage of the operation. Officials identified the rescued man as Abdul Wahab, while saying he had earlier been thought to be among the missing.
The wider tragedy remains severe. Early reporting after the collapse said 12 labourers had been trapped. By April 2, rescue officials had reported nine deaths and three injuries, though later reporting on Thursday referred to eight workers dead and two injured, alongside an official effort to verify identities and reconcile the list of victims and survivors. That discrepancy is important, and it suggests authorities are still sorting through who was recovered, who survived and who may have been misidentified in the chaotic aftermath.
Officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa moved quickly after the collapse, with the chief minister expressing grief and directing local authorities to continue rescue work. By Thursday, according to reports, the Mardan deputy commissioner and the district emergency authorities had formed a committee to investigate the collapse and verify the identities of those involved.
The rescue has brought a rare moment of relief to a story that had otherwise been dominated by death, confusion and questions about safety in Pakistan’s mining sector. For families in Mardan, though, the bigger picture hasn’t changed much: a mine collapsed, men went in and didn’t come home, and now officials will have to explain not only how the disaster happened, but why workers were exposed to such danger in the first place.
