October 25, 2003	Saturday	Sha’aban 28, 1424

NOVOSHAKHTINSK (Russia), Oct 24: Rescuers bored passages to a flooded coal mine in southern Russia on Friday in a frantic attempt to save 46 miners trapped for more than a day by freezing water.

Bulldozers and trucks dumped concrete slabs, metal rods and rocks into the main shaft of the Zapadnaya mine in the Rostov region to try and stop icy water from filling any more galleries more than 700 meters (230 feet) below the surface.

From a neighbouring mine, miners began to hollow out a passageway to a location where their 46 fellow-workers could have taken refuge from numbing water that rushed into Zapadnaya Thursday afternoon.

But the fate of the 46 remained unknown. Authorities still had not established contact with them late Friday and could only guess if they were still alive and if so, where they had taken refuge.

More than 24 hours after icy water first gushed into the mine where 71 men were working underground, the chances of rescuing those still trapped lessened by the minute.

“There is still a chance to save them... God willing 50 percent,” Igor Kulikov, a miner who managed to scramble out, told Russian television.

Others said that some of the shafts in Zapadnaya ran at an angle and that the trapped men could survive for several days if they had managed to reach these.

But the authorities had no clue to the location of the victims.

They also reported hearing sounds of what appeared to be a cave-in in the mine on Friday evening. The frightening noises prompted rescuers to order two men to go down the mine overnight in a special elevator to investigate what may have happened.—AFP