Hopes fade for Ukraine survivors

Ukrainian miners brought to the surface after Sunday's explosion

DONETSK, Ukraine (CNN) -- A fire raging deep underground in a Ukrainian coal mine has thwarted efforts to rescue 10 miners trapped after an explosion which killed at least 36 and injured 43.

Hopes are fading for those trapped as the blaze forced officials to call off the rescue efforts on Monday.

The methane and coal-dust explosion ripped through a shaft in the Zasyadko mine near the centre of the eastern city of Donetsk on Sunday.

"We can't continue to work down there until the fire has been localised," said Serhiy Smolanov, head of the rescue team on Monday. "At best it will take two days to isolate the fire."

As distraught relatives of the missing men gathered at the entrance to the mine, Smolanov said the chances of rescuing those missing were almost zero.

"A decision has been made to isolate the dangerous parts with concrete bulkheads, into which an inert gas will be pumped," he told Reuters.

Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma visited the mine on Monday and said there were no easy answers to Ukraine's disastrous mining safety record.

"Who needs this coal? If we don't have the equipment to ensure safety, we should not mine these (deep) seams," he told miners.

About 40 people were still hospitalised on Monday, most of them with severe burns, according to a statement by the regional Worker's Safety Department, which oversees investigations into mine accidents.

The explosion sparked an underground fire which is still burning.

More than 1,000 rescue workers battled flames and searched for survivors through the night but found only bodies. About a dozen were pulled out on Sunday and another 17 overnight, police and miners' union officials said.

Rescuers planned to pump the shaft with a gaseous compound to extinguish the fire, the safety department said.

Police, safety and miners' union officials were putting the death toll at 36, although reports from various rescue teams made it difficult to reach an exact figure.

According to Interfax, about 970 workers were in the mine and more than 250 were near the area at the time of the accident. Most were brought to the surface.

Previous tragedies

The disaster was the deadliest in Ukraine's mines this year and the latest in a long line of mining tragedies. It was the second in three years at Zasyadko, Ukraine's biggest mine.

Hospital workers carry an injured miner to an intensive care unit in Donetsk

Fifty miners were killed in a methane explosion at the mine in May 1999.

Before Sunday's accident, more than 140 Ukrainian miners had died this year because of outdated equipment and safety hazards, Interfax said. In May this year a methane gas blast ripped through a shaft of the Kirov mine near the town of Makyivka, killing 10 miners.

More than 300 workers died in mining accidents in 2000.

An estimated 75 percent of the countries mines are considered to be highly prone to methane blasts.

Ukraine was once the pride of the former Soviet Union for its huge coal mining industry. But the mines failed to recover from the Soviet collapse in 1991.

The government of independent Ukraine subsequently slashed its subsidies to the coal industry. Since then the death rate has risen, and the country's mines are widely regarded today as among the world's most dangerous.