NOVOKUZNETSK, Russia — Rescue teams carried victims to the surface in black plastic body bags yesterday in the aftermath of an explosion that killed 45 workers in a Siberian coal mine.
The search continued for two miners still missing, but rescue workers held out little hope of finding anyone alive.
Six of the 53 men who were in the Taizhina mine at the time of the explosion were rescued, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said. The 45th body was found late yesterday, Russian press reports said.
Funerals for some of the victims are expected today, which has been declared a day of mourning in the region.
The blast occurred early Saturday at a depth of 1,840 feet in the mine, located in the coal-rich Kuzbass region of western Siberia.
More than 600 people work at the mine in the city of Osinniki, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. Taizhina, which opened in 1998, was built on the foundation of a closed mine.
Rescuers pushed toward the trapped miners by both a direct route and a three-mile detour through a nearby mine shaft.
But they were unable to use machinery because of the risk of a new explosion and had to rely on the light from their headlamps as they tunneled through earth and rock. The area is about 1,850 miles east of Moscow.
Deputy Prosecutor General Valentin Simuchenkov said Sunday that the blast occurred after the concentration of methane gas in the mine increased roughly tenfold in a short period of time.
Investigators were trying to determine what made the methane level increase so quickly and what triggered the blast, Mr. Simuchenkov said. An earthquake or the shifting of coal plates remain among the potential causes.
A criminal investigation was opened into suspicions of safety violations, he said.
Russian television quoted officials as saying the mine would soon reopen.
Accidents are common in the Russian coal industry, but Saturday’s disaster was the deadliest in the Kuzbass region since 1997, when a methane blast at a mine in nearby Novokuznetsk killed 67 persons.
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