Polish rescuers have this morning found the 23rd body from a coal mine disaster.
"I can confirm that the efforts to rescue the men have come to an end," a spokesman for Polish state coal company Kompania Weglowa said. "We have found the bodies of 23 men. Everything suggests they died at the moment of the explosion."
The rescue operation began on Tuesday after an underground methane gas explosion at the mine in the town of Ruda Slaska, about 300 kilometres southwest of Warsaw.
Rescue work had been suspended yesterday due to high levels of methane still in the Halemba mine, one of the oldest in Poland.
The miners were in a shaft more than a kilometre underground when the blast occurred.
Poland's state-run mining industry, built up before the fall of communism in 1989 and starved of investment for years, has suffered hundreds of deaths over the last few decades.
President Lech Kaczynski, who visited the mine yesterday, said there would be a public inquiry into the cause of the disaster. He said he had indications some of the miners were not experienced and not sufficiently qualified.
Officials said the explosion appeared to have damaged an underground water pump, flooding the area and leaving little hope anybody could be found alive. Family members waited at the pit for news and were offered counselling by local doctors.
The Halemba mine, in operation since 1957, lies at the heart of the Silesia region's industrial belt that has been the scene of several disasters. In 1990, 19 miners were killed in the same pit by a gas explosion.