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ULYANOVSKAYA MINE, Russia - A methane explosion killed 78 people in a Siberian coal mine on Monday in the deadliest accident in Russia's mining industry in at least a decade, rescuers said.
More than 40 miners were still underground about 10 hours after the blast and the death toll could rise further. Rescue work was hampered by thick smoke and roof collapses in horizontal shafts that stretched for up to 5km.
"Seventy-eight people have perished," a spokesman for the Kemerovo region -- the heartland of the coal industry where the pit is located -- told the Vesti-24 television news channel.
"The rescue operation is continuing but it is being made difficult by thick smoke and the continued presence of gas in the mine," the spokesman said.
President Vladimir Putin ordered his emergencies minister to fly to the Ulyanovskaya mine to oversee the rescue effort.
"The main task now is to find as many people as possible," Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev said in footage broadcast by the Rossiya television station.
When the blast occurred, the pit's management was underground inspecting a new safety system installed by a British company, Tuleyev said.
Television pictures showed rescue workers in breathing apparatus walking down a shaft into the pit.
They also showed one miner, his clothes black with dirt, lying motionless on a stretcher as he was put into an ambulance.
The region's spokesman said 200 people had been in the pit when the blast happened at about 2000 NZT. He said 75 of them had been safely evacuated, leaving 47 trapped underground.
Itar-Tass said the body of a British citizen, a contractor who was underground at the time of the blast, had been found.
At the entrance to the complex, security guards prevented reporters from getting close to the pit. Ambulances and rescue vehicles were driving to and from the site, a photographer at the scene told Reuters.
"It is a very tough situation down there," Rossiya television quoted ambulance worker Yuri Shchetinin as saying. "There are a lot of miners there. We will try to get them out."
It was the deadliest in a long line of fatal accidents in Russian mines, many of which are several decades old and lack modern equipment.
Last year, 25 Russian miners died in a fire at a gold mine in eastern Siberia. A gas explosion at a coal mine in Kemerovo in 2004 killed 45 people.
The mine belongs to the Yuzhkuzbassugol company, in which Russia's second-biggest steelmaker, Evraz, holds a 50 per cent stake. Yuzhkuzbassugol's management owns the other 50 per cent and has operational control of the company.
Evraz declined to comment on Monday. There was no marked change in its share price on the London Stock Exchange.
The Ulyanovskaya mine was opened in 2002, making it unusually new by the standards of Russia's mining industry.
- REUTERS
