Rescuers find more bodies in mine after blast

Rescuers on Tuesday found five more bodies in a Siberian coal mine rocked by a methane gas explosion, raising the death toll to 105 in Russia’s deadliest mining disaster in a decade.

Some 200 workers were in the Ulyanovskaya mine in the coal-rich Kuznetsk Basin region at the time of the blast, which occurred early Monday at a depth of about 885 feet, emergency and regional officials said.

Emergency officials put the death toll at 105, with five still missing; 93 have been rescued.

Company officials and safety experts, along with a British citizen and his interpreter, were in the mine examining a British-made hazard monitoring system just before the blast, said Sergei Cheremnov, a spokesman for the regional government in Kemerovo, where the mine is located. The Briton, identified as Ian Robertson, and the interpreter were killed, and regional Gov. Aman Tuleyev said about 20 top mine staff, including the chief engineer, were among the dead.