At least 18 people were killed and some 25 were missing today when an underground explosion tore through a coal mine in Kazakhstan belonging to Mittal Steel, the company said.
The Lenin mine, where the blast occurred just before 4am, is one of eight supplying coal to the company's Timertau factory, one of the world's biggest steel plants and the Central Asian country's largest.
The plant continued to work as normal, a company source said, adding that the accident would not affect customers.
The head of Mittal Steel in Kazakhstan said only that 43 miners were missing after the explosion at the mine in the central region of Karaganda, some 200 km south of the capital, Astana.
But in London, the company issued a statement saying 18 people had died and 25 were missing after a methane explosion.
There was one report that two of the missing miners had been rescued. Zhanara Bekbanova, a spokeswoman for the regional governor, said by telephone that the men were in intensive care.
The Lenin mine, a labyrinth of seven shafts, was commissioned in 1964 and was the scene in November 2002 of a gas explosion in which 13 miners were killed.
Today's blast occurred at a depth of 500 metres and 324 miners working underground were able to scramble to safety, local media reports said. The ensuing fire continued to blaze.
"Forty-three are missing. They are missing. The number of dead is much lower. We cannot confirm that all are dead," Mittal Steel Temirtau CEO Naval Choudhary told Reuters by telephone.
He said he had no accurate death toll as he was waiting for information from the mine.
The Temirtau steel plant accounts for some four per cent of Kazakh gross domestic product and is the nation's single largest corporate employer with its 55,000-strong workforce.