Death Toll Rises To Four After Russian Pit Cave-In

Rescue teams are continuing to search for the final missing man at the mine.

Rescue teams found the body of a Russian miner on Monday, bringing the death toll from a cave-in at a Siberian coal pit last week to four, local officials said.

Seventeen workers were initially trapped underground by the cave-in on Friday at the Lenin mine, which is owned by a subsidiary of Russian miner and steel maker Mechel <MTL.N>, in the Kemerovo region.

Eleven workers escaped to safety and one was found alive on Sunday. Rescue teams are continuing to search for the final missing man at the mine.

"We have found the body of another miner," a spokesman for the Kemerovo region, which includes the giant Kuzbass coal basin, said by telephone. "One is still missing. The search is continuing and going on around the clock."

A methane gas explosion killed 110 miners at the Ulyanovskaya mine in March last year, becoming Russia's deadliest mine accident since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Two months later, a methane gas blast killed 38 people at a neighbouring mine, Yubileynaya, operated by the same company.