Rescuers were working round the clock to reach evacuate dozens of miners trapped in a Siberian coal mine after an explosion killed 78 people and brought the tunnels down on survivors on Monday.

About 200 people were believed to be working inside the mine when the blast, caused by methane, blew up the Ulyanovskaya mine in Novokuznetsk, a city in the Kemerovo oblast.

The death toll has risen to 78, with a British citizen among the casualties, the Itar-Tass news agency quoted the regional administration as saying.

In addition, three people have been confirmed as injured with 83 others safely evacuated.

Rescuers ploughed on through the night to evacuate the rest of the workers trapped in the mine while Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu flew to the site of the accident.

"The (mining safety) system registered a sudden outburst of a large amount of methane and a cave-in" before the blast, Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev said.

"The main goal now is to find as many people as possible. The second important task is to prevent a fire in the mine," Tuleyev said, adding that more rescuers were being sent from Moscow.

The Prosecutor General's Office has launched a criminal investigation to discover if any safety violations had contributed to the disaster. 

The Siberian region has seen a spate of deadly mining accidents in recent years. A fire at a goldmine in Chita, another Siberian region, killed 25 miners last year while Kemerov was struck back in 2005 by a mine explosion which claimed another 25 lives.

(Xinhua News Agency March 20, 2007)