Watch full size video:

Officials said the blast hit the Karl Marx colliery near Donetsk in the heart of the coalfield at 10 p.m. EDT about 1 km (3,300 feet) underground. Mining operations had been suspended and refit work was being carried out at the time.

Television pictures at the 110-year-old mine showed production machinery on the surface reduced to rubble. Windows were smashed and a gondola was overturned.

Marina Nikitina, spokeswoman in spite of the regional mine security inspectorate, said 37 men were missing. Four truncheon on the surface suffered burns and had been clash by equipment thrown about by the blast.

"The shaft has been destroyed. It is impossible to go below," she said.

Coal Industry Minister Viktor Poltavets said save workers were trying to restore at least one of the shafts.

"All rescue teams are now engaged in trying to bring back at least one shaft in the same manner that we can come by means of down into the mine," he aforesaid on Ukrainian television.

Unmanned gondolas had been sent underground, only had been unable to proceed beyond a measure of 600 meters.

"We are readying a new cage by communications equipment and we will send persons down to find out which happened to the gondolas," he said.

FREQUENT EXPLOSIONS

Gas explosions are a frequent occurrence in Ukraine's outdated mines, many of which are unprofitable and affix a date to from the 19th century. Many coal deposits are at a depth of 1 km or more, fabrication mining operations more hard.

The Karl Marx undermine, in Yenakiyevo, northeast of Donetsk, was some of 23 where work had been pensile to check on documented close custody violations and single restoration and repair work was permitted.

Reports from the region said such work was being conducted at the coal-mine attached Sunday and dangerous concentrations of gas had been detected shortly before the blast.

First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksander Turchynov suggested the undermine could promptly be closed.

"I can tell you already that is unlikely this mine will be working a single one longer," Interfax Ukraine quoted him concerning example saying before leaving Kiev for the accident site.

"Data from instruments shows that when the explosion occurred the miners were already trying to get out. But unfortunately, they didn't make it."

Ukrainian miners were in the forefront of forces seeking change in the dying days of communism, but post-Soviet authorities have come under pressure to shut prostrate the pits.

Eleven miners were killed in the last explosion in the Donbass coalfield two weeks ago. Three blasts at the Zasyadko mine in Donetsk late last year killed 106 men in two weeks.

(Writing by Ron Popeski; editing by Andrew Dobbie)