Siberian coal mine blast kills at least 32

YUBILEYNAYA MINE, Russia, May 24 (Reuters) An explosion at a Siberian coal mine killed at least 32 people today, emergency officials said, weeks after 110 miners died in a blast at a neighbouring mine operated by the same company.

A spokeswoman for Russia's Emergencies Ministry said six people were still missing at the Yubileynaya pit, in the Kemerovo region of western Siberia, about five hours after a methane blast tore through the mine.

Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev arrived at the mine to oversee the rescue operation and declared Saturday a day of mourning in the region, a spokesman for his administration said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on a visit to western Europe, spoke to Tuleyev by telephone to express his condolences, the local administration said.

The Yubileynaya mine, which opened in 1966 and employs around 1,000 people, is about 40 km away from the Ulyanovskaya pit where 110 people died in March -Russia's worst mining accident since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That accident triggered a massive government inquiry into safety in the mining industry, with initial conclusions pointing to poor safety standards.

Both mines are operated by Yuzhkuzbassugol, a company that is owned 50 per cent by its management and 50 per cent by Evraz Group, Russia's top steelmaker by domestic volume.

Russia's industrial safety watchdog announced an inquiry into the latest accident. Evraz shares were down around 3.7 percent in trading on the London stock exchange.

PAY STRUCTURE The pay structure at the Yubileynaya mine, where miners are paid bonuses depending on their output, encourages workers to cut corners on safety, said Alexander Sergeyev, chairman of the Independent Trade Union of Russian Miners.

''The tragedy at Yubileynaya is a consequence of the policies that were in place earlier,'' he said.

Russian media quoted an official with the safety watchdog Rosstekhnadzor as saying that Yuzhkuzbassugol could be stripped of its operating licence as a result of the investigation into today's blast.

The Kemorovo region is the hub of Russia's coal mining industry.

Around 3,000 km east of Moscow, the area is sprawling network of soot-stained industrial towns built around mines, and metalworks spewing out acrid smoke.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin industrialised the area in the 1930s and many families have been mining coal in the region since then.

Russia's coal industry employs about 250,000 people, of whom about 120,000 work underground, the coal miners' union said.

Yuzhkuzbassugol declined immediate comment on today's blast. It had been planning a share flotation prior to the Ulyanovskaya disaster, but the fate of the plan is now unclear.

An investigation by the state safety watchdog into the March explosion concluded that a methane detection system designed to warn miners when gas levels had built up to dangerous levels had been disabled.

REUTERS AK VC1505