More Than 50 Killed in Ukraine Coal Mine Blast

Ukraine was last night mourning one of the deadliest mining disasters in its 16-year history as an independent country, after at least 56 people were killed in an underground explosion - with 44 still missing.

Rescue teams said there was almost no hope of finding more survivors at the Donbass colliery in eastern Ukraine. A methane explosion ripped through the mine at 3.11am yesterday, turning the 1,000-meter (3,280 feet) deep shafts into an inferno of fire and smoke.

At least 450 miners were working underground at the time of the explosion, officials said. Most managed to escape but some were still trapped deep underground at the city's Zasyadko pit.

By last night rescue workers had retrieved 20 bodies. They were too badly burned to identify. "The chances [of rescuing anyone else] are small." said Yuri Zayats, head of the Zasyadko coal mine's trade union council.

If no more survivors are pulled from the mine, the accident will be the worst colliery disaster in Ukraine's mining history. The country's coal mines are already among the most dangerous in the world.

Survivors recovering in hospital said that their shift had begun normally, but suddenly there had been a tremendous explosion from an area where some of the miners had been drilling.

"Just before the explosion I checked the equipment and the sensors. Everything was OK," one miner Vitaly Kvitkovsky told Ukrainian TV. "We were working in section 3. The accident happened in section 7. Suddenly I heard a 'plop'. The temperature rose sharply - so sharply you couldn't see anything. I put on my breathing equipment and found my way out by feeling the pipes and the rail lines. It took me about 20 minutes to escape."

Ukraine's prime minister Viktor Yanukovich flew to Donetsk, in Ukraine's Russian-speaking industrial heartland, to assess the latest in what is a string of accidents to hit Donbass's dilapidated mines.

Yanukovich, who comes from the region, said the fate of the missing miners was unknown. At least 20 miners were taken to hospital, he said. One official put the number of missing at 61.

"There is a blockage at the accident site formed by a cave-in, air shafts and water channels. This is being cleared. Fire and smoke remain in section 14. The fire is still burning," he said after meeting a commission of inquiry into the accident.

President Viktor Yushchenko, the prime minister's longstanding rival, announced plans to visit Donetsk later today. His office quoted him as saying that Yanukovich's government had "made insufficient efforts to re-organize the mining sector, particularly implementation of safe mining practices".

One miner was killed on Saturday in a cave-in at the Lenin mine, also in the Donetsk region. Twenty miners were killed in an explosion in the same mine in 2002. About 80 were killed in another explosion at the Barakova coal mine in Luhansk in 2000.

Accidents are common in Ukraine's coal mines, many of which date from the mid-19th century. Official statistics put the death toll in mining this year at 80, though independent trade unions say the figure is higher. Last year 170 miners died.