DONETSK, Ukraine: Thirty-two miners in eastern Ukraine were missing and feared dead Wednesday following an explosion at a coal mine in the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
The blast took place at Zasyadko mine in the separatist hub of Donetsk, near the city’s war-wrecked airport.
The chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, announced 32 miners killed in what he called a “terrible tragedy.”
“There are victims, currently numbering 32,” Groysman told the assembly, calling on lawmakers to observe a minute’s silence.
Mykola Volynko, head of the Miners’ Union of Donbass, which covers the eastern region, confirmed that figure.
“At the moment we know of 32 people dead. We don’t know how many people are still in the mine,” he told AFP.
But Grosyman later cast doubt on the fate of the miners, telling MPs that, “according to the latest information,” 32 miners were unaccounted for, but that only one was confirmed killed.
A spokesman for the Trade Union of Coal Miners in Ukraine told AFP that two bodies had been brought to the surface so far.
Rescue workers were trying to locate a further approximately 45 miners, said the spokesman who did not wish to be named, adding the chances of finding them alive were “practically zero.”
A spokeswoman for the ministry of emergency situations of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic told AFP there were still scores of people trapped in the shaft.
32 die in Donetsk blast
32 die in Donetsk blast
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
