41 people are reported to have died in a methane explosion at a coal mine owned by a steel company in Kazakhstan.
The owners of the company, Mittal, said 32 bodies had been found and were being recovered.
The Lenin mine, where the blast occurred just before 9am (04.00 Irish time), is one of eight supplying coal to the company's Temirtau factory, one of the world's biggest steel plants.
Local police said in a statement that the blast occurred at a depth of 620 metres and 324 miners working underground were able to scramble to safety. They launched a criminal investigation.
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 accident was the deadliest since Kazakhstan became an independent state in 1991. An explosion at another Mittal coal mine in the Central Asian state in 2004 killed 23.
