( AFP ) - Over 40 miners were missing early Sunday after an explosion in a Ukrainian coal mine, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
"The mine was not working, only the people that take care of the mine were there -- a total of 42 people," the local mining monitoring agency's spokeswoman said.
The Karl Marx mine in the town of Yenakiyevo in Ukraine's coal-rich eastern Donetsk region had been closed several days before the accident due to safety violations.
Work was suspended at 20 mines in the Donetsk region following an explosion on May 23 which killed 11 people at the Krasnoarmeiskaya-Zapadnaya mine.