36 killed in Russia’s mining disaster

The death toll in Russia's worst mining disaster in recent history climbed to 36 on Sunday as officials said 26 missing workers could not have survived and another six, most of them rescuers, had been killed in a new explosion.

Four miners were killed on Thursday when a methane explosion ripped through the Severnaya mine in Arctic Russia at a depth of 748 metres.

"According to the expert technical council, 26 (missing) people who were in the mine had no chances of surviving," Tatyana Bushkova, a spokeswoman for the mine's operator Vorkutaugol, told media on Sunday.

"The rescue operation has been halted," she added in an emailed statement.

A fresh methane explosion at the mine in the small hours on Sunday killed five rescue workers and a miner, Anton Kovalishin, a spokesman for the emergencies ministry in the Komi region where the mine is located, told AFP.

The pit is located in the city of Vorkuta in the Komi region, which used to host one of the most feared Soviet-era Gulag labour camps. Vorkutaugol is operated by Severstal, the Russian steelmaker controlled by billionaire Alexey Mordashov.