A methane explosion tore through a coal mine in southern Siberia, killing 38 workers and injuring seven others, emergency officials said Thursday. Soon after the blast, 179 miners were brought to the surface, including seven with injuries, The Associated Press quoted Natalia Lukash, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry, as saying. Irina Andrianova, another ministry spokeswoman, said 217 people had been working in the Yubileinaya mine in Novokuznetsk, 3,000 kilometers (1,850 miles) east of Moscow at the time of the blast. Her statement that the death toll had risen to 38 appeared to account for all those who had been in the mine. An explosion at another mine in the region in March killed 110 people. That was the deadliest accident in more than 60 years in Russia's mines, many of which fell into disrepair when government subsidies dried up after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Both accidents occurred at mines operated by Yuzhkuzbassugol, a subsidiary of coal and steel producer Evraz SA, and Russian industrial safety officials said Thursday that the company's license may be revoked.
