Russia: Hundreds of rescuers raced against time yesterday to find 13 men trapped in a Russian coal mine for three days, after water cascading from an underground lake gradually flooded the pit.
Relief turned to despair when, after bringing 33 men to the surface of the Zapadnaya mine on Saturday, officials admitted they had failed to stop the flow of water into the southern Russian pit, and that 13 workers were still unaccounted for almost a kilometre underground.
Emergencies Ministry officials set the 800 rescuers the task of finding the missing miners by Tuesday morning, when oxygen in the pit is expected to become critically low.
Relatives gathered at the pit, close to Russia's border with Ukraine, hope the miners had time to scramble upwards into warm air pockets where they would be safe from the rising water. But the men are not believed to have any food with them underground, and the batteries on their lamps will now be losing power. Experts from Moscow joined local teams to try and drill though to the mine from a neighbouring shaft, after the freezing floodwater knocked out electricity supplies and paralysed an emergency lift.
Ageing mines in southern Russia and Ukraine are notorious for their poor safety record, and fatal accidents are common.