Bhubaneswar: Four workers are feared dead while nine have been injured in a landslide at an open cast mine of Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) in Odisha's Talcher, media reports said on Wednesday.  "Labourers working in the night shift at Bharatpur open cast mine in Talcher Coalfields of MCL came under a dump slide due to a strata failure," said an MCL statement.

The accident occurred between 11 p.m.-11.30 p.m. on Tuesday when a portion of earth broke loose trapping 13 workers and machinery at work, it said.

The fellow labourers and rescue teams immediately swung into action and rescued nine workers, who were shifted to the company's Central Hospital at Talcher for treatment of minor injuries. Rescue operation is underway to recover four missing workers.

MCL's Director (Technical/Operations) and Director (Personnel) have rushed to Talcher to oversee the rescue operations.

The open cast mine in Odisha, with the production capacity of 20,000 tonnes a day, had been shut after the accident, Dikken Mehra, a spokesman for Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd, a Coal India subsidiary told news agency Reuters.

Meanwhile, tension has erupted in the area following the incident. The district administration has deployed adequate security personnel to avoid any untoward incident.

The dangerous rat-hole mining involves digging of narrow tunnels, usually three-four feet deep, for workers to enter and extract coal. The horizontal tunnels are often termed "rat holes" as each just about fits one person.

(With additional information from Agencies)