Blast mine rescue work goes on

Rescue workers today pulled 17 more bodies out of a blazing shaft where a methane gas explosion killed at least 36 miners, a union chief said.

At least 10 miners were still missing after the explosion, which happened yesterday morning at the Zasiadko mine, in the coal-rich Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, said the pit’s miners’ union chief, Yuriy Zayats.

The blast was the worst disaster to strike the country’s hazardous mines this year, officials said.

Zayats said 31 people remained were in hospital with severe burns.

More than 1,000 rescue workers battled through intense smoke and used rickety equipment to descend to the site of the underground disaster, working through the night to search for survivors and fight the fire started by the explosion.

They found only bodies, and pulled out 17 overnight, in addition to about a dozen who were pulled out yesterday, Zayats said.

Zayats and the Emergency Situations Ministry put the death toll at 36, though reports from the various rescue teams made compiling an exact total difficult.

More than 250 miners were working in the mine at the time of the blast. Most were then taken to the surface, and dozens were taken to hospital.

Survivors who had been working in another shaft described three explosions in quick succession, though officials described one large blast.

Police surrounded the mine compound and barred reporters from entering.

Grim-faced workers and relatives sat outside the mine’s main administrative building in Donetsk awaiting the news.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blast at the Zasiadko mine, which was also the site of a May 1999 methane explosion that killed 50 miners and injured about 40 others.

President Leonid Kuchma was headed to the Donetsk region today to review the rescue effort and investigation of the accident.

Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Semynozhenko as saying: ‘‘This is a tragedy. We understand once again that that we must re-equip our coal industry both technically and technologically to bring it to a proper level.’’

Ukraine’s coal industry is considered among the most dangerous in the world. Most accidents are blamed on outdated equipment and widespread disregard for safety rules.

Ukraine was once the pride of the Soviet Union for its huge coal mining industry, but after the government of independent Ukraine slashed subsidies, the accident rate began to rise.

Last year, 318 coal workers died at work, and at least 120 have died so far this year.