Rescuers pull three bodies from Baikonur cosmodrome

Rescuers today pulled three bodies from a huge hangar in Kazakhstan after the roof collapsed at Russia’s main space launch site.

Emergency officials were still searching for five other trapped workers, but there was little hope that anyone had survived yesterday’s accident at the Baikonur cosmodrome.

An eight-man construction brigade was on the roof of the 260ft tall main hangar when it caved in.

Russia, which oversees the site, would not allow Kazakh rescuers to approach the building.

The hangar was cordoned off over fears the walls could collapse too.

A Russian rescue brigade arrived at the site overnight and retrieved three bodies before dawn today, said Irina Andrianova, spokeswoman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

Russian Space Agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov said the accident could have been prompted by something falling on a massive fuel tank kept inside the hangar, which would have produced a huge blast of air that caused the roof to swell and collapse.

Space officials ruled out terrorism or poor building maintenance as causes, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

Speaking on Russia’s NTV television, Gorbunov said damage was so great that the section of hangar that collapsed would probably not be repaired.

The accident revived tensions between Russia and Kazakhstan over the launch site, which Moscow leases from the Kazakh government.

The cosmodrome was built in the Soviet era when both nations were part of the same country, and was a major player in the space race, launching the world’s first satellite in 1957 and the first space traveller, Yuri Gagarin, four years later.

The roof collapse occurred in a building used for assembly and testing of space equipment.

NTV said seven of the workers were Kazakhs and one was from Belarus.

A Russian government commission led by Russian space agency chief Yuri Koptev and Science and Industry Minister Ilya Klebanov was appointed to investigate the accident.