Moscow - Thirty five people were reported dead and three
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.
By early afternoon Moscow time 35 bodies had been recovered, a
spokesman for Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry told the Russian
news agency Interfax.
Ministry officials said 217 people had been in the Yubileinaya
mine, some 3,000 kilometres east of Moscow, when the methane
gas-fuelled explosion occurred 520 metres underground.
By latest accounts, 179 people had been brought safely to the
surface, leaving three unaccounted for.
Seventy-five teams of rescue workers were on the scene, with
additional crews leaving nearby regions to aid in search and recovery
efforts.
'Unfortunately, (rescue) work is complicated by debris and a
strong gas presence. But it will continue,' Irina Andrianova, an
Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman, told state-controlled
Channel One.
A day of mourning was declared for Saturday by Kemerovo Governor
Aman Tuleyev, who said President Vladimir Putin sent his 'most
sincere condolences' to the families of the deceased.
The accident, which came after the March blast at another Kemerovo
mine, drew harsh words from the Russian federal government.
'Conduct a scrupulous analysis and give exhaustive
recommendations. I would want them to be objective, sufficiently
concrete and harsh,' Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov was quoted by
media as telling the head of Russia's federal agency for technical,
environmental and atomic safety.
Local prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the
explosion, and the safety agency 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.
Evraz shares were down about two per cent, to 33.58 dollars per
share from 34.25 dollars per share, in Thursday trading on the London
Stock Exchange.
Both the Ulyanovsk and Yubileiynaya 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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