SOMA, Turkey — There was no one to treat in the first aid tents near the entrance to the mine, where an old woman nearby wailed, “Our children are burning!” A man and his wife, dazed from a lack of sleep, walked the muddy grounds near here, looking for information about their missing son that no one in the government could provide.

“This is how they steal people’s lives,” said the grieving man, Bayram Uckun, who like many people here has become increasingly angry with Turkey’s leadership for its response to Tuesday’s explosion at the mine. “This government is taking our country back 90 years.”

The body of Mr. Uckun’s son, and those of at least 15 other men, was almost certainly still trapped in the coal mine. But with the death toll expected to rise above 300, this industrial disaster, the worst in Turkey’s modern history, has quickly metastasized from a local tragedy into a new political crisis for the Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Further aggravating antigovernment sentiment, security forces on Friday shot tear gas and water cannons at thousands of protesters in Soma.