Video report from Soma

On Wednesday, the Middle East Eye's Dominique Soguel arrived in the western Turkish town of Soma, minutes from the mountainside mine where an explosion killed at least 274 people on Tuesday.

In the rural town, flags are flying at half mast and several miners who died in the disaster have already been laid to rest. Ambulances shuttled between the local hospital at the city centre and the mine, flashing bright lights, but with their emergency sirens muted.

"There is definitely a very devastated  attitude," Soguel said. "People are very upset and very, very tired."

At the scene of the explosion, Soguel said a sea of relatives, aid workers and police waited anxiously to see whether miners would come out alive. A siren was set off each time a miner was pulled out. Three times in around an hour, Soguel said the crowd of people became excited and hopeful as a siren rang in the night, but only dead bodies came out of the mine.

As night fell, rescue operations were underway in the glow of flood lights, torchlights and a pregnant moon. 

Soguel said, in addition to more than 100 rescue workers, many covered in soot, there was a significant security presence of police and military officers at the site.

Earlier on Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the mine and later gave a press conference saying Turkey had "witnessed one of the biggest work accidents in our recent history."

Hundreds of distraught family and friends in Soma responded to the press conference, kicking his vehicle and calling for his resignation as he left.

Soguel said there were sporadic outbursts from the tense crowd at the mine on Wednesday night. When Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz arrived, she said a crowd formed around him and chanted angrily.

Back in the town centre as midnight fell, she said the grim-faced crowds that had gathered during the day thinned down to a small band of people waiting for news of loved ones at the hospital doorsteps.

Funerals for the miners will continue in the small town on Thursday, she said.