All 29 men missing in a New Zealand coal mine have died after a powerful second blast tore through the pit, authorities have said.
Police said there was now no chance of finding anyone alive, confirming the country's worst mining accident in nearly a century.
Prime Minister John Key called it a 'national tragedy' and said flags would fly at half-mast.
'Where this morning we held on to hope, we must now make way for sorrow,' Mr Key said.
'Today, all New Zealanders grieve for these men. We are a nation in mourning.'
Police Supt Gary Knowles, who led stuttering rescue efforts, said he was at the mountainside Pike River mine when the sickening second explosion hit at 2:37pm (01.37 Irish time), five days after Friday's initial blast.
'There was another explosion at the mine. It was extremely severe,' he said.
'Based on expert evidence I have been given... it is our belief that no one has survived and everyone has perished.'
Relatives angry
The news prompted anguish and anger among relatives, who had suffered an agonising wait for a rescue that never came as toxic gases stopped emergency teams from entering the mine in New Zealand's South Island.
In the grief-stricken town of Greymouth, home to many of the miners, builder Mike Curtis said locals were united in believing that rescuers should have gone in 'straight away - all the old-timers knew that.'
The victims of the blasts ranged from a 17-year-old on his first shift to a 62-year-old veteran, and included two Australians, two British and a South African.
District mayor Tony Kokshoorn said the incident was the 'darkest hour' of New Zealand's rugged West Coast region, a centre of the country's burgeoning mining industry based on exports to Asia.
The mine is a new facility that sent its first shipment of hard coking coal for making steel to India only this year.
'It's unbelievable. It doesn't get worse than this,' Mayor Kokshoorn said, adding that devastated relatives were questioning why a rescue was not attempted sooner.
'They just sobbed openly, just fell to the floor. There were people just shouting out, anger,' he said.
'The cause (of the second explosion) was the build-up over the last five days of the gases again and they noticed this morning. A lethal mixture ignited the entire mine', he said.
Stop-start rescue efforts had earlier inched forward when a bore hole into the mine finally broke through, but found only a toxic cocktail of dangerous gases with little oxygen.
A remote-controlled robot - the second such device after a first one broke down - also travelled about 1km into the mine and found the helmet of one of the only two survivors, its headlight still on.
Rescue efforts were dramatically ended when the second blast ripped through the gas-filled network of tunnels.
