A view of Ulyanovskaya mine near the
town of Novokuznetsk in Kemerovo region, some 3,000 kilometres (1,864
miles) east of Moscow. The casualty toll of a gas explosion in a Siberian
coal mine rose to 107 people on Tuesday, as hopes waned of finding
survivors in Russia's worst mining disaster since the Soviet
era.(Xinhua/AFP Photo) Photo
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MOSCOW, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers are searching for miners missing
underground after a mine blast in Siberia on Monday killed more than 100 people,
emergency officials said on Tuesday.
The Emergency Situations Ministry told the Interfax
news agency that 106 people had been found dead after the methane explosion in
the Ulyanovskaya mine in Novokuznetsk, a city in the Siberian region of
Kemerovo. There were 203 people working underground when the blast hit, the
ministry said.
Ninety-three miners had been rescued, a ministry
spokesman said earlier.
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who
headed to the site to oversee the rescue effort, said the search for miners
still trapped was continuing and more rescuers were arriving from nearby
regions.
Also, psychologists were on hand to provide
counseling to families of the miners at the site.
Some 20 top managers of the mine, including the chief
engineer and chief mechanic were among those killed, the press service of the
Kemerovo regional administration said.
A British employee of the international mine auditing
company IMC was also among the dead, the regional administration said. The
British Embassy in Moscow confirmed the death of the British national.
Each family of those killed would receive up to 2
million rubles (77,000 U.S. dollars) as compensation, according to Interfax.
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.
President Vladimir Putin sent a message to Kemerovo
governor Aman Tuleyev to offer his condolences, the Kremlin said.
Designating Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to take
charge, Putin has ordered thorough investigations into the blast and two other
accidents within the past week -- a fire at a nursing home in southern Russia
and the crash of a passenger jet in the west.
The fire erupted early Tuesday in a nursing home in
the southern Krasnodar territory, killing 62 people. On Saturday, six people
died in a crash-landing of a Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft in Samara, a city on the
Volga river.
"Everything must be done for the investigations to be
conducted at the highest standard for the causes of the tragedies be
identified," Fradkov was quoted by Interfax as saying at a government meeting.
Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation and
were working at the site 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 gold mine in Chita, another
Siberian region, killed 25 miners last year. In 2005, 25 people died in a mine
blast in Kemerovo, where mining accidents killed 63miners in the previous year.
MOSCOW, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Russia on Tuesday declared a
day of nationwide mourning for more than 170 people killed in a mine blast, a
fire at a nursing home and a plane crash, which have occurred in the past four
days in the country.
MOSCOW, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers were working to evacuate dozens of miners trapped in a Siberian coal mine after 78 people were killed in an explosion at the mine on Monday.
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