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Dozens of miners are trapped underground and feared dead after a blast at a coal mine in the eastern Ukrainian rebel stronghold of Donetsk, with rescuers saying the chance of finding many survivors was slim.
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Mine officials said the explosion on Wednesday was not linked to fighting at the nearby frontline in the war between Moscow-backed rebels and Ukrainian government forces. Kiev accused the separatists of holding up the rescue effort by restricting access.
Outside the gates of the Zasyadko mine, about 30 relatives clamoured for information about survivors. A miner injured in the blast mingled with the crowd, his face covered in scratches and one arm hanging motionless by his side, the result of a broken collarbone.
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The miner, Sergei Baldayev, said five bodies had been retrieved so far after the blast in a shaft deep underground.
The sister of one miner who was in the pit at the time of the explosion, Alexei Novoselsky, was in tears. “Tell me, are there survivors? Why are you concealing the truth,” she said as a local rescuer tried to calm her.
Donetsk has been the scene of heavy fighting between pro-Russia separatists, who control the region, and forces loyal to the government in Kiev. A ceasefire has sharply reduced the violence in the past week.
The neighbourhood around the mine has come under artillery fire, with fragments from Grad rockets visible on surrounding roads, but mine officials said the explosion was most likely caused by gas.
In Kiev, the Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said rescuers had been dispatched, “but the Russian terrorists did not let them reach the scene of the accident”.
About 50 miners are still thought to be underground, according to medical workers at the scene, miners and a mine official speaking on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, some officials had said more than 30 people were killed in the blast, although officials later refused to confirm that figure. Rescuers were working to reach the centre of the blast, they said.
Asked what were the chances of trapped miners surviving, a medical worker said: “It’s getting smaller and smaller all the time, because of the methane, the hot air, burns to the airways.”
She said two buses had been brought to the mine to carry away the bodies of the dead.
The mine, in operation for 57 years, has a history of fatal accidents. An explosion in 2007 killed 106 people. A cemetery next to the pit holds the graves of many miners.
“When there’s an accident, we bury them all here,” said the head of security at the shaft. “Coal is a costly business.”
A welder, who gave his name as Oleg, said: “I’ve been down the pit for 23 years, and this is the fourth explosion that I can recall. If they didn’t get them out straight away, then later they will only retrieve bodies. An explosion is a terrible thing.”
The Zasyadko coal mine produced 1.4m tonnes of coal in 2013. The mine is in the centre of the Donbass region, which is Ukraine’s industrial and coal-producing heartland.
Ukrainian coal production fell 22% in 2014 to 65m tonnes as the conflict disrupted mining operations, leading to shortages of coal at power plants.
