ROME -- Up to 100 Sardinian coal miners who say they see a future in clean energy have armed themselves with hundreds of pounds of explosives and barricaded themselves nearly 438 yards underground to put pressure on the Italian government to protect the mine's survival.

The miners, from a 460-strong workforce, seized 772 pounds of company explosives and locked themselves inside the Carbosulcis mine -- the country's only coal mine -- west of Cagliari overnight on Monday, one of them said, ahead of a government meeting this week to discuss the pit's future.

"We are worried that the mine may close. We are afraid for our jobs," Sandro Mereu, 54, a miner who has worked there for 28 years told Reuters.

"We are prepared to stay here until we hear a response from the government that secures the future of the mine. We will stay here indefinitely," Mereu told Reuters by telephone. 

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According to The Associated Press, miners at the mine told Sky TG24 TV that they wanted the government and Parliament to quickly approve funding for a project to capture and store underground carbon dioxide that otherwise would add to polluting greenhouse gases. 

The miners want the mine to be diversified into a combined mining and carbon capture site to protect its future. 

Carbosulcis was estimated to have 600 million metric tons of coal reserves in 2006 but has struggled to stay productive. It was previously occupied in 1984, 1993 and 1995, when protesting workers stayed in a tunnel for 100 days.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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LONDON -- Security checks of vehicles entering Olympic sites in the U.K. have not been properly carried out, according to a number of staff, ITV News reported Wednesday.

The unnamed staff claimed that in some cases fake searches of vehicles for bombs were carried out using dogs that had not been trained to detect explosives. 

The company involved, G4S, denied the claims and ITV News reported that some of the staff who spoke to them had been sacked.

The U.K. news station said the “key claims” were that:

• Cargo areas of trucks and vans have not been adequately searched by either dogs, scanners or other security teams.
• In some instances, dogs that were not trained to find explosives were used to carry out fake searches of vehicles.
• Some assessments of dogs and handlers have been faked.

Read more from ITV News

Ian Horseman Sewell, G4S’s managing director of global events, told ITV News the allegations were not true.

"At no point is there any evidence that dogs that have been trained to detect substances other than explosives have been used to try to detect explosives,” he said.

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The security operation at the Olympics will be the largest carried out in Britain in peacetime, ITV news said.

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Updated at 8:15 a.m. ET: Afghan security forces on Saturday arrested five insurgents suspected of planning massive attacks on crowded areas of the capital Kabul, an intelligence spokesman said.

S. Sabawoon / EPA

Afghan security official stands guard at the checkpoint on a roadside in Kabul on Saturday.

National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri said the five men were seized on Kabul's outskirts with 10,000 kilograms of explosives (11 tons) stuffed in 400 bags and hidden beneath a cargo of potatoes in the back of a Pakistan-registered truck.

The group also planned to assassinate the country's second vice-president Abdul Karim Khalili, the BBC reported.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary reported on Twitter that a video detailing the insurgents' plan had been found.

"It could have caused large-scale bloodshed," Tahiri told a news conference in Kabul.

"Three Pakistani terrorists and two of their Afghan collaborators who placed the explosives under bags of potatoes in a truck were caught."

Tahiri said the five men confessed to receiving training from Noor Afzal and Mohammad Omar, whom he identified as key commanders of the Pakistani Taliban and Pakistan intelligence.

Video footage released by NDS to media showed the detained men, including the alleged Pakistanis, talking about where they came from while sitting against a blank white wall.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Rahmat Gul / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

A Pakistani intelligence official declined comment on the accusations, while Afghan officials were not immediately available to give additional information.

Coordinated assault
The alleged connection to militants in Pakistan will likely step up the pressure on Islamabad, after a recent assault by insurgents on diplomatic and government areas in Kabul and elsewhere put the spotlight on the South Asian nation. 

Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of using insurgent groups like the Afghan Taliban as proxies in Afghanistan. 

Pakistan's government denies supporting or giving sanctuary to insurgents on its territory. 

Insurgents this week launched a coordinated assault on four provinces, targeting diplomatic and government areas of Kabul with rockets and gunfire in what they said was retaliation for abuses of Afghans by U.S. soldiers.

Kabul fighting ends after 18 hours of intense gunfire

The attacks showed the insurgency's resilience nearly 11 years since the Afghan Taliban were toppled.

The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks and said it planned similar assaults in coming months.

Reuters contributed to this report.