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Russian mine blast kills 13, injures 23
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-28 14:40
A methane blast in a mineshaft in Russia's Siberia killed 13 people and
injured 23 on Thursday, a spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry said.
The blast ripped through the mine as a repair team was patching up part of
the Listvyazhnaya mine, near Russia's border with Mongolia. The ministry
spokesman said 67 out of 103 miners inside the mine escaped unharmed. Officials
said it was too early to say what caused the methane to explode.
Accidents are common in Russia's loss-making collieries, many of which date
back to dictator Josef Stalin's 1920s industrialisation drive and where safety
procedures are largely unchanged since Soviet times.
A blast in the Kemerovo region in April killed 45 miners, and a flooded
mineshaft last October trapped 11 miners underground for a week in a mine near
Ukraine.
But the owner of Listvyazhnaya said there were no reasons to believe that
poor maintenance of the shaft or faulty equipment could be blamed for Thursday's
blast.
"It is too early to make suggestions about what caused the blast," a
spokeswoman for private mining company Belon told Ekho Moskvy radio. Belon
bought Listvyazhnaya in 2002.
"It is too early to say that worn-out equipment could have been the cause,"
she added. "We do not rule out that human error could be at fault, because the
mine had a good record of blast safety and work organisation.
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