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Search continues after 97 die in Siberian mine blast

Rescuers yesterday labored to locate 13 miners missing nearly a day after a methane gas explosion in a Siberian coal mine that killed at least 97 others. It was Russia's deadliest mining disaster in a decade.

Some 200 workers were in the Ulyanovskaya mine in the coal-rich region known as the Kuzbass at the time of the blast, which occurred early on Monday at a depth of around 270m, emergency and regional officials said.

Sergei Cheremnov, a spokesman for the regional government in Kemerovo where the mine is located, said that 97 miners were confirmed dead and that the search was continuing for 13 who remained missing; 93 had been rescued earlier.

Cheremnov said that company officials and safety experts, along with a British citizen and his interpreter, were in the mine examining a British-made hazard monitoring system just before the blast occurred. The British man and the interpreter were later confirmed dead. Cheremnov said it was unclear exactly what he was doing in the mine.

The massive mine in the city of Novokuznetsk, about 3,000km east of Moscow, is operated by Yuzhkuzbassugol, an affiliate of Russian coal and steel company Evraz Group SA, which acquired a 50 percent stake in the company in 2005.

No one answered repeated calls to the company.

However, company spokesman Eduard Sivtsov earlier told Russian television channel NTV that rescuers were checking a large section of the mine for survivors.

"Their work is complicated by a great number of obstructions," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu to travel to the area, and the industrial regulatory agency Rostekhnadzor had sent investigators.

The incident was the latest to highlighted the precarious and hazardous state of Russia's mining industry, which fell into disrepair when government subsidies dried up after the Soviet collapse.

At least 30 workers died in Russian mining accidents last year, including 25 who perished in a fire at a Siberian gold mine. In 2004, a blast at a mine on the outskirts of Novokuznetsk killed 47 workers -- the deadliest in the region since 1997, when a methane explosion at a mine in the city killed 67.

In recent years, conglomerates like Evraz have bought up coal mines and similar enterprises and consolidated operations, selling raw and semi-processed material to steel smelters, electricity producers and other major industry. But some government officials in the past have accused private companies of cutting corners on safety measures in order to cut costs.

Kemerovo Regional Governor Aman Tuleyev was quoted by ITAR-Tass as saying that families of the dead would each receive at least 700,000 rubles (US$25,000) as compensation.
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