Mine investigation gets underway

The accident is Poland's worst mining disaster since the 1970s. President Kaczyński said there were signs some of the miners were inexperienced and insufficiently qualified. "There must be a non-biased investigation into this disaster. The investigation should also focus on the training of miners," he said. As WBJ went to press, investigators were attempting to ventilate the mine of methane gas to examine the scene first hand.

Rescuers had worked through two nights in a desperate search for the men, most of whom had descended into the mine to retrieve machinery. "We went looking for our living colleagues, who worked here with us, but from the start our hope of rescuing anyone alive was almost non-existent," rescue team leader Jan Gaura told reporters and families of the dead gathered outside the pit.

The miners were more than 1km underground in the Halemba mine, one of Poland's oldest, when Tuesday's blast occurred. The spokesman for Polish state coal company Kompania Węglowa, Zbigniew Madej, said the bodies of all 23 had been found. "Everything suggests they died at the moment of the explosion," he said.

The Halemba mine, in operation since 1957, lies at the heart of Silesia's industrial belt. In 1990, 19 miners were killed in the same pit by a gas explosion. Poland's state-run mining industry, built up before the fall of communism in 1989 and starved of investment in recent years, has suffered more than 150 deaths over the last 30 years. (Reuters)