33 Miners Killed in Eastern Ukraine Coal Mine Explosion
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JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images(DONETSK, Ukraine) — Thirty-three miners were confirmed dead Wednesday as the result of an explosion at a coal mine in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, a region that has been under siege in a conflict between pro-Russia rebels and government military forces.
Only 14 men managed to escape the mine alive.
Although Donetsk has been shelled in the last nine months, an emergency ministry official told ABC News that there was no fighting in the area since an internationally-sponsored cease-fire agreement went into effect in recent weeks.
“It was not due to artillery shelling, it was most likely a gas-air explosion,” rescue services official Yuliana Bedilo said.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine has, to date, killed more than 6,000 people.
The same coal mine was the site of one of Ukraine’s deadliest mining disasters, a 2007 accident in which more than 100 people died. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, about 250 miners are believed to have died in accidents and explosions there.
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