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 21 (Xinhua) -- The death toll of the Monday mine blast in Siberia has increased to 107, the Itar-Tass news agency reported on Wednesday.
The search for the last three missing miners is
continuing, and 26 bodies of miners have been identified among the 107 who were
killed in the methane gas explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine in Novokuznetsk, a
city in the Siberian region of Kemerovo state, governor Aman Tuleyev said.
The governor ruled out human error as a possible
cause for the disaster.
"Costly imported equipment, which cuts power supplies
to all vital facilities in case of an excessive concentration of gas, was
installed at Ulyanovskaya. A state commission is searching for the source of a
high concentration of methane," he said.
"The main theory is a breach of mining safety," a
senior assistant to Kemerovo regional prosecutor Alexei Bugayets said.
The mine blast is the deadliest of its kind in
Kemerovo state in the past 60 years. Some 20 managers of the mine, including the
chief engineer, the chief mechanic and deputies to the mine's director, a
British deputy to the mine, were among the killed, the press service of the
Kemerovo regional administration said.
President Vladimir Putin ordered a three-day national
mourning starting from Wednesday for those killed in the accident, one of the
deadliest in a decade in Russia.
The Siberian region has seen several deadly mining
accidents over 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.
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