MOSCOW, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers were searching for eight miners missing underground after a mine blast in Siberia on Monday which has killed more than 100 people, emergency officials said on Tuesday.

    "A total of 102 people were killed. Ninety-three have been rescued. Eight are still listed as missing" in the methane explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine in Novokuznetsk, a city in the Siberian region of Kemerovo, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman told the Interfax news agency.

    Some 20 managers of the mine, including the chief engineer, the chief mechanic and deputies to the mine's director, were among those killed and a British was among the dead, the press service of the Kemerovo regional administration said.

    Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who headed to the site to oversee the rescue effort after the accident, was quoted by Interfax as saying that the search for miners were continuing and rescuers had approached the most complex section of the mine.

    "Search operations continue. Additional forces are arriving from Siberia and the Far East. Mine rescue teams from the Rostov region are expected to arrive soon," he said.

    "There are serious cave-ins. We are moving cautiously," he added.

    Regional authorities have declared three days of mourning starting Thursday for those killed in the accident, one of the deadliest in a decade in Russia.

    The Prosecutor General's Office has opened a criminal case to see if safety rules were violated.

    The Siberian region has seen several deadly mining accidents in the past few years. A fire at a goldmine in Chita, another Siberian region, killed 25 miners last year. In 2005, another 25 people died in a mine blast in Kemerovo, and at least 63 miners were killed in mine accidents in Kemerovo in 2004.