Moscow | Forty-eight people were missing Thursday, stranded inside a coal mine in Siberia after an accident that killed at least one, Russian authorities said.
“Rescue operations at the Listviajnaya mine are underway. A total of 237 people were brought to the surface and 45 people were injured, ”the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations told Telegram.
“Forty-eight people are still in the mine. The forces and resources of the ministry are working on the spot, ”continued this organization, in particular in charge of firefighters and first aiders.
“Their location is not known at present,” said the local official of the ministry, Alexeï Choulguine, quoted by the TASS news agency.
The press service of the governor of the Kemerovo region, where the mine is located, for its part indicated on Telegram that 43 people had been hospitalized, including two in “serious condition”. “One person died,” said this source.
The precise causes of the accident were not immediately known.
“At 9:07 am, the Ministry of Emergency Situations received an alert concerning smoke in the Listviajnaïa mine, in the town of Gramoteïno,” said the services of Governor Sergei Tsivilev.
According to this source, eleven specialized rescue teams from the ministry are on site and several others are on their way, in addition to a helicopter with doctors on board.
Accidents in mines in Russia, as elsewhere in the former USSR, are often linked to laxity in the application of safety standards, poor management or dilapidated equipment dating back to Soviet times.
The deadliest accident in recent years left 91 dead and more than 100 injured in May 2010 in the Raspadskaya mine, in the Kemerovo region, where there are many coal mines.