Russian rescuers find 11 trapped miners dead

MOSCOW, Sep 8 (Reuters) Rescuers today found the dead bodies of 11 miners trapped underground by a fire at a gold mine in Eastern Siberia and continued to search for more than 20 others still missing, officials said.

The fire was sparked yesterday by welding work deep in the central shaft of the Darasun mining complex, owned by London-listed Highland Gold, in Russia's remote Chita region on the Chinese border.

''Altogether 11 dead bodies -- eight in one part of the shaft and three in another have been found,'' a spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry in Chita, 5,000 km east of Moscow, said by telephone.

''The bodies are being moved to a single location to be elevated to the surface,'' he added.

He said a total of 33 miners had been trapped by the fire and the fate of the remaining 22 was unknown.

''There is still hope to find survivors,'' the spokesman said.

Many of the rescuers, who worked through the night trying to reach the trapped miners through side tunnels, suffered smoke poisoning and some of them were taken to hospital.

The spokesman added that fresh rescue teams were arriving at the scene. ''The fire has been localised, but has not been completely put out yet,'' he said. ''We have no information about the remaining miners.'' SMOKE AND GASES Interfax news agency quoted officials as saying that high temperatures, smoke and poisonous gases complicated the search.

Russian media said the miners had portable breathing devices, which allowed them to hold out for several hours, and that fresh air pumped into the shaft improved their survival chances.

But the extra air also fed the fire and made it more difficult to put it out, the media added.

Sixty-four miners were below ground when the fire broke out and some managed to crawl to safety through a tunnel. Officials say the fire broke out at a depth of between 85 and 135 metres.

Russia's gold mines have a generally better safety record than the more hazardous coal mining industry, which has been plagued by fatal accidents since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Underinvestment, low pay and sloppy safety standards have been blamed for a series of mining disasters, the most recent of which was a blast at a Siberian coal mine in 2005 in which more than 20 died.

Russia's environmental watchdog said it would probe Highland Gold's activities, including those in other regions.

Highland Gold's shares fell by 4.5 per cent in London on Thursday after news of the fire.

The Darasun mine, the smaller of Highland Gold's two main gold projects in Russia, produced 11,761 ounces of gold in the first half of this year, or around 13 per cent of the company's total production.

Highland Gold has forecast total gold output this year of 180,000 to 185,000 ounces. The company is one-fifth owned by Canada's Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner.

REUTERS PB VV1148