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Cause of Russian mining explosion still undetermined

Rescuers pulled more bodies from a Siberian coal mine on Tuesday as investigators tried to pinpoint what sparked a methane gas explosion that killed 107 people in Russia's deadliest mining disaster in a decade.

Three days of mourning were called in the entire coal-rich region known as the Kuzbass where the Ulanyovskaya mine was located and where most of the population works in mining or mining-related industries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a thorough investigation of the accident.

A federal Emergency Situation Ministry officer put the death toll at 107 on Tuesday night, while three others were still missing; 93 had been rescued earlier.

Regional Governor Aman Tuleyev said about 20 top mine officials, including its chief engineer, who were in the mine checking on the operation of a British-made hazard monitoring system, were among the dead.

Sergei Cheremnov, a spokesman for the regional government, said a British employee of the British-German mining consultancy IMC had also been killed.

Some 200 workers were underground at the time of the blast, which occurred early on Monday at a depth of around 270m, officials said. Two of the three miners injured in the blast were hospitalized in intensive care.

"There was a bang and smoke then the rescuers came. We switched on our safety kits and started going to the surface. Five of us came out. First they helped me to walk then it was all normal and I came back to my senses," one miner, Alexei Loboda, told First Channel television.

Nikolai Kultyn, an inspector with federal industrial regulator Rostekhnadzor, said there were no gas monitors where the pocket of methane gas had accumulated. He said the high number of deaths was likely due to the fact that many people were in a small area at the time of the blast.
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