UKRAINE:Thirty-seven miners were missing after a gas explosion tore through a pit in Ukraine's Donbass coalfield yesterday, but rescuers clearing a blocked shaft still hoped to bring some of them out alive.
Officials said the blast hit the Karl Marx colliery - in the heart of the coalfield long subject to deadly accidents - at 2am about 1km (3,300ft) underground. Mining operations had been suspended and repairs were being conducted.
A government minister overseeing operations said rescue teams trying to make their way through one of two damaged shafts had heard voices. There remained hope that the trapped miners could be brought to the surface.
"At the moment a rescue scheme is being worked out, with the idea being to clear the surface, the entrance to the main shaft," first deputy prime minister Oleksander Turchynov told reporters.
"When rescue teams went down the goods shaft, voices were heard at about 800 metres. There is hope that people there are alive." But Turchynov's press service said he told officials investigating the accident that rescue teams had "only a few hours" to work before the affected area would be flooded.
Mr Turchynov said the blast was the most powerful to hit the mining industry in the memory of veteran miners.
Five staff working on the surface suffered burns and other injuries after being struck by equipment tossed about the blast. Production machinery on the surface was reduced to rubble and windows were smashed.
Dozens of distraught relatives sat awaiting news of rescue efforts. "My brother is underneath. I am in no way certain they will get him out," said a miner who said he had worked there for 30 years. "I know the network down there. If the shaft has collapsed you can't get to them with the elevator. No one needs the people who died here. No one needs them. We are slaves."
Gas explosions are a frequent occurrence in Ukraine's outdated mines. Eleven miners were killed in the last explosion in the Donbass coalfield two weeks ago. Three blasts at the Zasyadko mine in Donetsk late last year killed 106 men in two weeks.
- (Reuters)