Last Ukrainian Miner's Body Recovered

Rescue crews on Sunday dragged up the last of 81 people killed in a methane explosion in an eastern Ukrainian coal mine, the former Soviet republic's worst mine disaster in decades.

A preliminary investigation suggested that safety violations led to the accident Saturday at the Barakova mine in Krasnodon, about 425 miles east of Kiev, the Interfax news agency quoted President Leonid Kuchma as saying.

Kuchma criticized the irresponsibility and neglect that has caused many job-related disasters in Ukraine in recent years.

"If we do not finish with this [irresponsibility], how will we dare to look in the eyes of the victims' families," Kuchma said during a visit to Ukraine's western city of Lviv, according to Interfax.

Ukraine has the world's highest coal industry death rate, blamed largely on outdated and badly functioning equipment and miners' neglect of safety rules. Its mine accidents are often caused by methane, a naturally occurring, colorless, odorless and highly explosive gas that seeps out of coal seams and can build up easily in poorly ventilated mine shafts.

At least eight miners were taken alive from the shaft after Saturday's blast and hospitalized with burns. One died of injuries Sunday, hospital officials said.

Nearly 200 miners escaped the shaft safely after the explosion, which happened at a depth of 2,191 feet. The 80 other workers in the mine at the time were killed immediately, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

Thirty-three rescue units worked through the night at the site, and dragged up the last of the bodies Sunday.

Relatives and colleagues milled about the mine through the night, embracing and weeping in a light snow. Ashen-faced workers lined up to read a handwritten list of those killed posted on a wall in the mine's offices.

Kuchma said the government has already sent $1.8 million to help the families of those killed in the mine. He decreed that Monday and Tuesday will be nationwide days of mourning.

The number of people killed Saturday was the highest since at least 1980, when 66 miners and two rescuers died at the Gorskaya mine in then-Soviet Ukraine.

At least 274 miners died in mine accidents in Ukraine last year, down from about 360 in 1998, and the death figure this year stood at 45 before the latest accident.

Much of eastern Ukraine, once proud of its coal riches, has turned into a wasteland of poverty and environmental destruction. Heaps of coal waste dot the landscape among crumbling mine administration buildings.

Ukraine's mine elevators are made of rickety wooden planks and rusty wheels, and tattered ropes that struggle to haul workers up and down several times a day.

Most of Ukraine's more than 400,000 coal workers also do not receive their wages on time, which prompts sporadic strikes. Last year, 31 miners at Barakova stayed underground in protest for more than two weeks.

A special government commission, which included Labor Minister Ivan Sakhan Energy Minister Serhiy Tulub and local authorities representatives, started investigation Sunday on possible causes of the accident.

Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, who heads the commission, will arrive in the region on Monday, Interfax said.

Written by Sergei Shargorodsky