At least 35 dead in Siberian mine blast (1st Lead)

May 24, 2007, 9:27 GMT

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.