Russian mine death toll hits 60; 30 still missing

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Rescuers working through the night found eight bodies but no survivors in a stricken Siberian coal mine on Wednesday after powerful weekend blasts that killed at least 60 people, emergency officials said.

Thirty workers were still missing three days after the explosions in the massive Raspadskaya mine in Mezhdurechensk, in the Kemerovo region about 3,000 km (1,850 miles) east of Moscow.

Hopes of finding any alive were fading fast as grieving relatives buried the bodies of victims recovered from the mine.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said rescuers were trying to make their way to the remotest corner of the sprawling mine, the Interfax news agency reported.

"We have 24 hours to bring miners out of there, if there are any there," Shoigu was quoted as saying.

An explosion authorities said was a methane gas blast ripped through the mine late on Saturday, followed hours later by a stronger blast that wrecked the mine's main ventilation shaft and badly damaged buildings on the surface.

The disaster was the deadliest in a Russian mine since 110 people died after a methane blast at the Ulyanovskaya mine, also in the Kemerovo region, in March 2007.

DAMAGE ESTIMATES

Aman Tuleyev, the governor of the Kemerovo region, said material damages from the blast would likely exceed 5 billion roubles ($165 million).

"We calculate that damages from the destruction of the buildings above the mine are 700 million roubles and that inside the mine it is about 5 billion roubles," Interfax quoted Tuleyev as saying. "This isn't a final figure."

He estimated that it would take about 8 months to repair the damage. However, the Kemerovo region's press service on Tuesday cited mine owner Raspadskaya's director, Gennady Kozovoy, as saying it could take several years to fully restore operations.

Raspadskaya declined to comment on Wednesday. But Interfax quoted its deputy director Vladimir Goryachkin as saying the company planned to fully restore the most badly damaged section of the mine within eight months.

Shares in the company, Russia's largest stand-alone coking coal producer, plunged 23.4 percent on the MICEX exchange on Tuesday, but recovered some of these losses on Wednesday, with the shares trading up 5 percent at 0940 GMT.

Raspadskaya says its mine is Russia's largest underground coal mine, and analysts said the disaster could affect supplies and drive up prices in a tight market.

Raspadskaya produced 13 to 14 percent of total Russian coking coal concentrate output in 2009, supplying Russian steel giants Evraz, MMK and NLMK, Citigroup analysts said in a research note on Tuesday.

Analysts at Troika Dialog said the accident would likely hurt steelmakers Evraz and NLMK in addition to Raspadskaya.

The mine could be out of operation for a month or two and is unlikely to reach full capacity until the fourth quarter of 2010, they said in a research note on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Steve Gutterman and Alfred Kueppers; Editing by Mark Heinrich)