Ukraine mine fire kills 34

Ukraine's mines have one of the highest accident rates in the world

MOSCOW (CNN) -- Rescuers have found the bodies of 33 miners in an elevator shaft 2,000 feet below ground after fire broke out inside an eastern Ukraine coal mine.

Russian media said the body of another miner was found about 650 feet below the surface.

More than 100 miners were at work when the fire started 2,300 feet below the surface of the Ukraine Mine.

Several survivors escaped through ventilation shafts in the mine. Another miner may be missing.

The death toll in Ukrainian mines was at 116 for the first six months of the year -- the yearly average is 300 to 400.

The fire broke out early on Sunday in a conveyor section at a depth of 570 metres at the Ukraina mine in the town of Ukrainsk.

"They have found their bodies, they are all dead," said Col. Oleksiy Pechenkin of the Emergency Situations Ministry.

"Thirty people were in a trolley that was going down and three others were found near it, being killed by smoke inhalation," he added.

A total of 107 miners were working when the fire broke out before dawn, and 74 had been safely brought to the surface.

Two miners needed treatment for smoke inhalation, the ministry said in a statement.

In a seperate incident in another mine, on Saturday, a fire broke out at the Rodina mine in the eastern city of Kryvyi Rih in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

The blaze was extinguished early on Sunday, Pechenkin said. All 60 miners working underground at the time of the fire were rescued and no injuries were reported.

Ukraine's largely unprofitable mines have one of the highest accident rates in the world due to poor maintenance and neglect of safety regulations.

Last year, a gas explosion killed at least 50 miners in Donetsk, the former Soviet republic's eastern mining belt.

The worst mine accident since Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union came in March 2000, when 80 miners died in an underground explosion.

An estimated 75 percent of the country's 209 mines are considered to be highly prone to methane blasts.

The World Bank has advised Ukraine to close half its mines, but the nation has closed only a small fraction.

More than 3,700 miners have died since Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

-- CNN's Ryan Chilcote contributed to this report