Japanese Mine Explosion Toll Mounts to 36

TOKYO — Rescuers searching for survivors of a gas explosion that ripped through a coal mine today came upon body after body as they crawled through the shafts, bringing the death toll to 36.

They had little hope of finding 29 more trapped miners alive after the blast that blew mine carriages from their tracks and slammed men against the walls.

The disaster, the second to befall a major Japanese coal mine in three weeks, occurred at Mitsubishi Mining Co.’s Minami Oh Yubari Mine in Yubari, central Hokkaido.

Yubari police spokesman Takeshi Hashiba said 36 people were confirmed dead and 22 injured, seven seriously, as a result of the explosion.

Yubari Mine manager Shin Kamiya said earlier that there were 336 miners in the colliery at the time of the explosion and that most of them made their way out minutes after it occurred.

Carrying Masks and Food

A rescue team of about 70 company miners, carrying oxygen masks and food, was searching for the missing near the site of the explosion, about 2 1/2 miles from the closest entrance.

Akira Suzuki, an official of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, said the explosion occurred near two diagonal shafts. He quoted a senior government mining official as saying the explosion could have resulted from a leak of methane gas, which was detected in the mine.

The senior official, Tatsuo Takahashi, told a news conference that mine carriages were seen blown off their tracks and that some miners found dead in the shafts were apparently thrown against the wall of the mine in the explosion.

Eleven miners died and four were injured in a gas explosion on April 25 in a coal mine on the island of Takashima.