KIEV, July 7: A fire raced through a coal mine in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, killing 33 miners trapped hundreds of metres underground in the latest of many mining tragedies to plague the ex-Soviet state.

As television pictures showed shocked and distressed miners debating the causes of the inferno around the rusting colliery, President Leonid Kuchma sent condolences to the families of those who died. Some were as young as 25.

Kuchma’s press spokeswoman said the president had vowed to do everything “to urgently find out the reasons” for the fire, which broke out about 570 metres below the surface and was still blazing 12 hours later.

A top-level investigating team dispatched to the site was bound to raise again the question of what to do about Ukraine’s aging pits, where on average six die for every million tons of coal produced.

“They have found their bodies, they are all dead,” a spokesman for the emergencies ministry in the capital Kiev said.—Reuters