At least 11 people died in a methane explosion at Russia’s largest coal mine on Saturday. Rescue workers desperately tried to reach 80 miners trapped underground and then they became trapped after a second blast in the Raspadskaya mine in Siberia .

According to Valery Korchagin, a regional emergency official, another 24 workers were injured in the blast in the Kemerovo region and around 300 miners were saved.

The state news agency, Itar-Tass, reported that after the second blast, 20 rescuers had been lost and their fate was unknown. A source at Raspadskaya told reporters that 80 people were still underground.

Aman Tuleyev, the Governor of Kemerovo, stated: ”The second blast destroyed the main air shaft and can cause more injuries, and there is a risk of more explosions. The rescue work will continue when the atmosphere in the mine is restored, but to conduct rescue work now means to send people to die,”

The explosion compromised weekend celebrations of the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War the Second. The main focus will be on the military parade in Red Square in Moscow on Sunday attended by Russian and foreign leaders.

President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu to ensure that everything possible was done to rescue the miners. Russian media reported that the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, spoke with the Kemerovo region governor Aman Tuleyev.

In 2007, 71 people died after an explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine in the remote southern Siberian region of Kemerovo and three years earlier, in 2004, a total of 60 miners had lost their lives in two separate mine blasts .

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