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| Tuesday, 13 April 2004 |
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At least 44 dead, three missing after Siberian pit blast OSINNIKI, RUSSIA, Monday (AFP) At least 44 miners died in a blast in a pit in Siberia, rescuers said Monday, with little hope of finding three who were still missing in the latest deadly accident to plague Russia's mining industry. Three more bodies were found late Sunday by rescuers and 41 bodies had been brought to the surface, said crisis cell official Valery Korchagin. Methane gas caused the early-morning explosion Saturday some 600 metres (2,000 feet) down at the Taizhina pit in Russia's Kuzbass coal mining area. The blast sparked a fire underground and caused the shaft to collapse in several places. Gas flooded the underground tunnels and the ventilation system stopped working. "Hope dies last, but there is little chance of finding anyone alive," Korchagin conceded wearily late Sunday. A team of more than 300 workers, some from the nearby city of Krasnoyarsk, were drafted in to help the rescue effort, which continued through the night in a bid to reach the potential survivors. Wearing gas marks to protect themselves from the carbon dioxide in the air, they were forced to approach from an adjacent mine because of the damage to the shaft. "It was impossible to survive in there," said one of the rescuers who emerged with a blackened face from the mineshaft. Until Saturday evening, some voices and sounds could be heard from underground, but since then it had gone silent, another rescuer told AFP, adding that there had been no contact with the missing miners. The wife of one of the missing men, Oksana Kuznetsova, who has two children, aged eight and 10, said tearfully that she was resigned to widowhood. "I don't have much hope, I am getting ready for his funeral," she said. Russian television showed the bodies being carried out in black plastic bags. |
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