Flags flew at half-staff across Ukraine on Tuesday as cemetery workers dug graves for the victims of the country’s worst mining disaster — a methane blast deep underground that killed at least 88 coal miners.

Funeral preparations were under way as hopes faded for miners still missing two days after the explosion at the sprawling Zasyadko mine in the eastern city of Donetsk, the heart of the ex-Soviet nation’s coal industry.

The bodies of 88 miners have been found, the Emergency Situations Ministry said, making it the deadliest in a long string of mining disasters in Ukraine since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. A March 2000 explosion at a coal mine in the neighboring Luhansk region killed 81.

Tuesday was declared a national day of mourning.

The blast had ripped through the mine at a depth of more than 3,300 feet, with flames, smoke and fallen rock hindering the rescue operation. The tunnel where the miners are believed buried was blocked by a rockslide, authorities said.

Bodies pulled from near the tunnel were burned, indicating that others could not have survived, said Mykhailo Volynets, head of the Independent Trade Union of Miners.

complete this news at : cnn.com

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