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Russian mine blast kills 97, 13 missing

At least 97 miners were killed and 13 were still missing after a methane-gas explosion at a coalmine in central Siberia.

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MOSCOW: At least 97 miners were killed and 13 were still missing after a methane-gas explosion at a coalmine in central Siberia, the Interfax news agency, quoting the government officials, reported on Tuesday.

Of the more than 203 men working underground at the time of the explosion, 93 were pulled alive from the rubble at the mine near the city of Novokuznetsk more than 3,000 km east of Moscow.

According to an unofficial information, among the dead was a British banker who was examining the mine's safety measures.

The rescue teams were working in the galleries that had been hardest hit by Monday's blast at the Ulyonovsk longwall mine, Sergei Shoigu, Russian Emergency Situations Minister said. "We are proceeding carefully."
 
Conditions in the mine for the rescue workers had somewhat improved, an official in the regional administration told Interfax.
 
"The ventilation in the shafts is better," the officials said. "The gas is receding."
 
Doctors were looking after the families of the miners, the official added.

The explosion is the worst mining disaster in Russia since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Ulyanovsk mine is one of the most modern mines in the coal-heavy area of central Siberia known as the Kuzbass, a Soviet-era industrial centre where coal has been mined for more than 150 years.
 
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, speaking from South Africa, said a government commission would investigate the explosion as well.

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