A court in Siberia on Saturday remanded five people in custody for two months to face charges related to a mining accident that killed more than 50 people this week.
Three managers of the Listvyazhnaya coal mine, including its director, were ordered to remain in custody until late January on charges of flouting industrial safety standards, a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office said.
The court also ordered two safety inspectors, who had issued a certificate for the mine this month but had not actually checked the facility, to remain in custody until late January.
The accident, which regional authorities say was likely caused by a methane explosion, claimed the lives of 51 people, including five rescuers who were sent to bring out dozens of men stuck deep underground.
A total of 285 people were in the Listvyazhnaya mine early Thursday when the blast sent smoke that quickly filled the mine through the ventilation system. Rescuers led to the surface 239 miners — 49 of whom were injured.
Remains recovered
The Emergencies Ministry said the bodies of the five miners had been found on Saturday and brought to the surface.
In separate comments carried by the RIA news agency, the regional governor said the miners’ identities had preliminarily been established and that their families had been invited to formally identify the bodies.
The Health Ministry said on Saturday that 60 people were being treated in hospital for injuries sustained at the mine, TASS news agency reported.
The disaster at the mine, located some 3,500 kilometres east of Moscow in the Kemerovo region, was Russia’s worst since 2010, when explosions killed 91 people at the Raspadskaya coal mine in the same region. Thursday’s explosion wasn’t the first deadly accident at the Listvyazhnaya mine. In 2004, a methane explosion killed 13 miners.
