Over 30 dead in Ukraine coal mine disaster

A methane explosion ripped through a Ukrainian coal mine, killing more than 30 workers in the country's worst mining accident in two years, the Emergency Ministry said yesterday.

The accident at the Krasnolimanska mine, 50 kilometres west of Donetsk was the latest in a long series of mining tragedies and served as a harsh reminder of the country's legacy of creaking Soviet-era infrastructure.

"We found 31 bodies. We still have to learn the fate of the other five coal miners," an official from a government commission on the accident said by telephone from the scene.

An Emergency Ministry official in Donetsk said hope for finding the remaining workers trapped a kilometre below the surface was running out as rescue teams failed to put out a raging fire that engulfed section after section of the mine.

"We will continue the search but they have practically no chance," he said. Television footage showed a small crowd of crying women standing near the gates of the coal mine in the heartland of Ukraine's coal-mining Donbass fields.