Thirty-two miners have been killed in an accident in Zasiadko coal mine in Donetsk, Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Hroisman said.
“A tragedy happened at the Zasiadko mine this morning. There are fatalities. There are 32 of them at the moment,” Hroisman said at a parliamentary session on March 4 morning.
He asked the parliamentarians to pay tribute to the memory of those killed.
The Zasiadko mine is located on a territory not controlled by Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Donetsk Regional State Administration reported on its website that according to the latest data, one person was killed, six miners received burns of various severity and 43 miners were trapped underground.
It was reported earlier with reference to Mykhailo Volynets, the head of the Ukrainian Independent Union of Miners, that 47 miners remained unaccounted for after an air-methane mixture exploded underground at the Zasiadko coal mine in Donetsk at 5:20 a.m. on March 4.
Five miners managed to leave the accident-stricken section safely, the union said on its website.
Meanwhile, Yuliana Bedylo, a spokesperson for the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic (DPR) Emergency Situations Ministry, said there were 47 miners underground at the time of the accident, including 33 in the section affected by the blast. “Preliminary reports indicate that one person was killed and five others injured,” Bedylo said, adding that the accident had been caused by the explosion of a gas-air mixture and that other circumstances had yet to determined.
The Zasiadko mine, one of the largest in Ukraine, is located on a territory not controlled by Kyiv.
