Moscow - Sixteen people were reported dead and 21 remained
missing after a mine blast in Russia's Siberian region of Kemerovo,
officials said Thursday, two months after a blast killed 110 at a
nearby mine.
'According to the data as of 10:45 am Moscow time (0745 GMT), 16
people had died in the mine,' a spokesman for Russia's Emergency
Situations Ministry told the Russian news agency Interfax.
The unidentified spokesman said 217 people had been in the
Yubileinaya mine, some 3,000 kilometres east of Moscow, when the
methane gas-fuelled explosion occurred.
He added that 180 had been brought safely to the surface, leaving
21 unaccounted for.
Local prosecutors were to decide whether to open a criminal
investigation into the explosion, and Russia's federal agency for
technical and atomic safety said it had created a special commission
to investigate the blast.
'The commission is in place and has already begun work,' an
unidentified spokesman was quoted by Russian agencies as saying.
The agency added that the Yubileinaya mine had been closed after a
number of violations were uncovered following the March methane blast
at the Ulyanovsk mine, which like Yubileinaya is owned by the
Yuzhkuzbassugol mining company.
All the violations were addressed, and a court allowed the
Yubileinaya mine to resume work, the spokesman said.
But agency representatives said Yuzhkuzbassugol, which is owned by
oligarch Roman Abramovich's Evraz Group, could lose its license.
Both mines are located in the coal-heavy area of central Siberia
known as the Kuzbass, a Soviet-era industrial centre where that fuel
has been mined for more than 150 years.
Many of the region's mines date back to Soviet times and have
recorded a number of accidents in recent years. In 2005, 25 people
died in a single mine explosion, and 47 perished in a blast in 2004.
In 1997, the final toll of an explosion was put at 67, but March's
explosion is thought to be the most deadly.
That explosion led to the immediate closing of eight Russian
mines where safety violations had been revealed. An additional 10
received mandates to address violations.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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