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RUSSIA-UKRAINE-MINE-ACCIDENT
3 dead, 14 missing after blast in east Ukraine mine
KIEV, April 26, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Three people have died and 14 are missing
following a coal mine blast in a separatist eastern region of Ukraine, news
agencies reported Friday.
The gas blast ripped through the mine in Yurievka village in the self-
proclaimed republic of Lugansk, which broke away from Kiev in 2014 and is run
by Moscow-backed rebels.
“At the moment we understand three dead have been brought to the surface.
The fate of 14 others is uncertain,” local government official Yevgeny
Katsavalov told the Lugansk news service.
Head of the unrecognised republic Leonid Pasechnik on Twitter called the
explosion at the Skhidcarbon mine a “terrible tragedy”.
Emergency services were doing “everything necessary,” he said.
The Lugansk news agency said the mine was closed in 2014 due to the
conflict between Kiev’s forces and the Russia-backed separatists, but was
reopened in 2018.
Most of Ukraine’s coal is produced in its eastern region, where the
ongoing fighting has cost some 13,000 lives.
Kiev has tried to boost the operations of other pits under its control in
the west of the country.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1442 hrs