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At least 40 dead in Russian mine blast
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-11 16:51

Russian rescuers on Sunday burrowed a tunnel from an adjacent mine in hopes of finding survivors of a blast that killed at least 40 coal miners in a Siberian shaft and left about 10 others missing underground.

The explosion ripped through the mine early Saturday, as miners who had worked through the night were nearing the end of their shift. The blast left a pile of rubble that blocked rescuers, forcing them to resort to a longer route to the epicenter through a neighboring mine.

Eight miners were rescued from the Taizhina mine on Saturday, said Valery Korchagin, an emergency department spokesman in the Kemerovo region of western Siberia. Four of the rescued miners were injured, and two of them were hospitalized with burns, he said.

Rescuers found the 29th body on Sunday, close to 24 hours after the blast, and 10 more bodies about six hours later, Korchagin said. About 10 miners remained missing. The bodies were very badly disfigured, making identification very difficult, Korchagin said.

As the nation celebrated Easter, the most important holiday for Russia's predominant Orthodox Christian faith, the trapped miners' fearful relatives gathered in the mine's administration building to await news. Russian state television showed brief pictures of a sobbing woman rushing away after apparently learning of a relative's death in the mine.

Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev, who was overseeing the rescue operation, said on Russian television that the shortest path to the blast site was blocked by what appeared to be impassable rubble, and the ITAR-Tass news agency said the roundabout path rescuers were trying to use stretched 5 kilometers (3 miles).

The missing miners were on the other side of the wall of rubble or under it, Korchagin said.

He said the rescuers were not using drills or blasting equipment, but confining themselves to working with shovels and crowbars to lift the earth gently out of the way. Working all day Saturday and into the night, they stopped their work occasionally for a minute of silence to allow them to hear any signs of life, ITAR-Tass reported.

The blast occurred at a depth of 560 meters (1,840 feet), and was believed to have been caused by a methane buildup, a duty officer at the Kemerovo regional emergency department said. The shaft was filled with carbon dioxide, the Interfax news agency reported.

A Russian government commission arrived early Sunday to investigate the cause of the blast.

Accidents are common in the Russian coal industry, and miners stage frequent protests over wage delays and declining safety standards. Local prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into negligence of safety standards at the Taizhina mine, state television reported.

In September 2002, one miner at Taizhina was killed and two were seriously injured when the roof of a ventilation shaft collapsed during reconstruction work, showering them with rocks.

According to ITAR-Tass, more than 600 miners work at the mine in the city of Osinniki, about 3,000 kilometers (1,850 miles) east of Moscow in western Siberia's coal-rich Kuzbass area. It is a new mine, opened in 1998, but it was built on the foundation of a closed mine and the equipment shown on Russian television stations appeared to be run-down.

A methane explosion killed five miners at a mine in the Kemerovo region in January, and an investigation indicated a methane blast _ possibly sparked by a short circuit _ caused a ceiling collapse that killed 12 workers at another mine in the region last June.

In October, icy water flooded a mine in southern Russia, killing two men. Rescuers freed 69 others.

 
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