MOSCOW, March 19: A gas explosion tore through a Siberian coal mine on Monday, killing at least 75 miners, officials said, as emergency workers raced to rescue dozens still trapped underground.

“Seventy-five miners are dead and 74 have been rescued and brought to the surface,” a spokesman for the governor of the Kemerovo region where the accident took place said. He said 186 people were in the mine at the time of the blast.

Russian television broadcast footage of convoys of ambulances rushing to the scene and pictures of injured miners covered in coal dust being carried on stretchers into local emergency rooms.

“The main goal now is to rescue as many people as possible. The second priority is to make sure a fire does not break out in the mine,” Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev was quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency as saying.

Tuleyev said the explosion had occurred after a rockslide caused methane gas to build up in a section of the mine.

The blast occurred at the Ulyanovskaya mine near the town of Novokuznetsk in Kemerovo region, some 3,000 kilometres east of Moscow. The huge mine is operated by Yuzhkuzbassugol, an affiliate of Russian metals group Evraz.

Fourteen teams of specialist emergency workers were taking part in the rescue operation and more were expected to arrive from the regional centres of Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk.

President Vladimir Putin ordered Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu to fly to the scene to oversee the operation.

Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said authorities would launch an investigation into the accident and that a criminal case had been opened.

“More strict measures on safety are needed in these kinds of dangerous situations,” Fradkov told reporters in Pretoria, RIA Novosti reported.

“Naturally, it is first of all the owners of such enterprises that need to pay more attention to questions of maintenance,” Fradkov said.

The coal industry in Kemerovo, a region in southwest Siberia, has suffered from chronic under-funding since the collapse of the Soviet Union and there have been several accidents there in recent years.

The accident nonetheless was a grim reminder of serious safety concerns facing Russian miners and the weakening of trade unions that in Soviet times could paralyse sectors of the national economy.

Alexander Sergeyev, the chairman of the Independent Trade Union of Miners, said widespread reforms were needed to ensure safety in Russia’s mines.

“Miners often have to work hastily and ignore possible dangers,” if they want to earn reasonable salaries in the mines, he said.—AFP