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Mine blast hits eastern Ukraine
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-08 15:51

KIEV  -- A powerful blast ripped through a coal mine in eastern Ukraine Sunday morning, leaving three miners injured and 40 others missing.

The gas blast occurred at around 5 a.m. local time (0200 GMT) at the Karl Marx coal mine in the town of Yenakiyevo in Ukraine's coal-rich Donetsk region, about 640 km southeast of the capital Kiev, said Igol Krol, spokesman for the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry.

"Three miners, who were at the time of the explosion in the mine trunk, managed to return to the surface. They were injured. The fate of other 40 miners who were underground remains unknown," he said.

"The explosion was so powerful that buildings on the surface have been deformed," a witness was quoted by local media as saying.

Local officials said the Karl Marx mine had been closed several days before the accident due to safety violations.