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The death toll from the weekend methane explosion at a Siberian mine went up to 45 as of Monday while the hope for the survival of the two miners that remain missing dwindled.
Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said that 44 bodies have been brought to the surface and the 45th victim found on Monday will be lifted from the colliery on Tuesday, according to the Interfax News Agency.
Six of the 53 miners who were working at a depth of about 560 meters in the Taizhina mine, about 3,000 kilometers east of Moscow, at the time of the explosion were rescued and 33 victims have been identified.
Funerals for some of the victims were expected on Tuesday, which was declared a day of mourning in the region.
The blast tore through the mine in the coal-rich Kuzbass region of western Siberia on early Saturday. More than 600 miners work at the mine in the town of Osinniki in Russia's Kemerovo district, according to the Itar-Tass News Agency.
Deputy Prosecutor General Valentin Simuchenkov said Sunday that the blast occurred when the concentration of methane gas in the mine had increased roughly tenfold in a short period of time, according to Monday's Moscow Times daily.
Investigators are trying to determine what made the methane level increase so quickly and what triggered the blast, Simuchenkov said, adding that an earthquake or shifting of coal plates were among the potential causes of the buildup.
He said it was unclear whether human error was to blame, but that a criminal investigation was opened into suspicions of safety violations.
The Taizhina mine opened in 1998 but was built on the foundation of a closed mine.
Saturday's disaster was the deadliest in the Kuzbass since 1997, when a methane blast at a mine in nearby Novokuznetsk killed 67 people.
In September 2002, one worker at the mine was killed and two were seriously injured when the roof of a ventilation shaft collapsed during reconstruction work.
(Xinhua News Agency April 13, 2004)
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