Seven miners killed in Ukraine blast

Kiev: Seven miners were killed and nine injured when a gas explosion ripped through a state-owned coalmine in eastern Ukraine, officials said on Tuesday.

The blast occurred Sunday at a depth of around 800metres (2,600 feet) while some 90 workers were on shift at themine in Makiyivka in Ukraine's mineral-rich Donetsk region. "Seven miners were killed and nine hospitalised," theemergency situations service said in a statement.

The bodies of all the victims had been recovered by earlytoday and work at the mine has been suspended, the statementsaid. Fatal accidents are a regular feature at Ukrainian mines,most of which are located in the country's industrial easternregion.

Many of the mines are underfunded and poorly equipped,and safety violations are rife. In the worst accident of its kind in the country'spost-Soviet history, more than 100 miners were killed in anexplosion in 2007 at the Zasyadko mine, one of the threebiggest in Ukraine.