A methane discharge deep inside the Skochinsky colliery in Donetsk killed two miners and left 12 others unaccounted for on Monday, Ukraine's emergency ministry confirmed. Of 53 workers underground at the time, 39 reached the surface; several were taken to hospital.
Officials said gas concentrations at 1,300 metres below ground hit three times the permitted safety threshold. Explosive work had been carried out in the shafts only hours before the incident.
The state-run Skochinsky mine, which opened in 1975 and employs up to 4,000 people, is considered one of Ukraine's most hazardous workplaces because of persistently high methane levels in shafts that run for hundreds of kilometres. Its worst prior accident, a gas leak in April 2004, killed 63 miners and injured 51 others.
The disaster is the latest in years of repeated tragedies across Ukraine's eastern coalfields, where aging Soviet-era equipment and inadequate financing are common. Exactly a year earlier, a blast at the Karl Marx mine in Yenakiyevo, roughly 60 kilometres east of Donetsk, killed 12. In November 2007, a gas explosion at the Zasiadko mine claimed 101 lives, the deadliest such accident in Ukrainian history.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in June 2009, in its own words.