The lift cage plunged down the shaft at the Vitåforsgruvan in Malmberget, with further details on the the number of casualties as yet unknown.
“There were two people onboard the lift at the time. Both were killed in the accident,” said Anders Lindberg at mining firm LKAB which has called in its crisis group.
The last time a fatal accident occurred at an LKAB mine was in Kiruna in February 2008, when a 21-year-old was buried under falling scree 700 metres underground after subsidence.
Several months later eight people were trapped in a the mine at Malmberget after a car set alight. The men were rescued after six hours, tired and hungry but unhurt.
During the 1990s a total of four people were killed in mining accidents in Sweden, a significant decrease on the 1960s which experienced an average death toll of 15 miners per annum, either in landslides or in machinery accidents.
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