Rescuers search for 13 miners as 23 others found alive in Ukrainian mine

UKRAINE:RESCUE WORKERS were searching for 13 Ukrainian miners last night after finding 23 of their colleagues alive in a colliery that was devastated by a huge methane explosion.

Officials sought to calm the celebrations of many relieved miners' relatives, however, by underlining the difficulty of bringing the trapped men to the surface of the unstable Karl Marx pit through a cramped tunnel stretching 1km underground.

"This is a narrow shaft and the process is going to take a long time," said Marina Nikitina, a spokeswoman for the mine safety inspectorate in eastern Ukraine.

Hundreds of miners die there each year in vast pits, some a century old, where safety conditions are poor and methane levels are high.

Deputy prime minister Oleksander Turchynov, who is at the pit, said yesterday afternoon that rescuers had descended through the ventilation shaft to about 1,000 metres underground, the depth at which the explosion occurred on Sunday morning.

"We will talk about people being saved only once they are safe on the surface," Mr Turchynov said.

By mid-afternoon, four miners had been brought to the surface from deep underground, after two had been rescued earlier in the day. One other miner was found dead.

"Those further away from the explosion could have survived. It's less likely for those closer to the shaft," said survivor Nikolai Vitenko.

"There was a young guy sitting by the water pump. It was as if his head had been blown off. We survived simply because we were further away. There was huge destruction. Carts and pipes were blown apart."

The massive explosion injured several people and destroyed equipment at the head of the pit, which was shut down on safety grounds after a series of blasts at the nearby Zasyadko mine killed 106 people last November.

Officials insisted the men in the Karl Marx pit were only doing safety work, but some miners' relatives said coal was still being extracted as usual, despite the ban.

As hopes rose for the miners last night, Ms Nikitina warned that the rescue was still a race against time.

"The water is rising [in the pit], the groundwater pumps have been destroyed," she said.