Some 500 Trapped Miners Rescued from Donetsk Mine
MOSCOW – Nearly 500 miners trapped underground in the breakaway Ukrainian region of Donetsk were rescued safe and sound on Monday, after shellfire damaged the electric plant that usually powers them up to the surface, the pro-Russian government said.
The separatists’ news agency said all 496 people retrieved from the galleries were alive and well, after the first group of 100 was evacuated from the underground coal face.
It noted, however, that the electrical substation that supplies the Zasiadko coal mine with power remained off-line, wrecked by an artillery shell, and that it was too early to estimate the extent of the damage.
The attack was carried out by forces loyal to the Kyiv government, charged the deputy head of the separatist forces’ Joint Chiefs of Staff, Eduard Basurin, who added that there was no danger of the mine flooding.
Since fighting broke out in the eastern Ukraine in April last year, some of the coal mines that abound in the region have had to shut down to avoid being targeted in the clashes between pro-Russian separatists and the central government in Kyiv.
On Saturday, some 30 civilians were killed in an artillery attack in the port city of Mariupol, a stronghold of the pro-Kyiv forces in the contested region.