The death toll in Russia's worst mining disaster in years climbed to 36 on Sunday as officials said 26 workers missing following methane explosions at the pit in the country's frozen Arctic north could not have survived.
Two blasts ripped through the Severnaya coal mine on Thursday at a depth of 748 metres (2,450 feet), killing four miners and trapping 26 others.
Six more people were killed on Sunday as a fresh explosion hit the mine in the city of Vorkuta in the Komi region, once home to one of the most feared Soviet-era Gulag labour camps.
"According to the expert technical council, 26 (missing) people who were in the mine had no chances of surviving," Tatyana Bushkova, a spokeswoman for the mine's operator Vorkutaugol, told AFP on Sunday.
"The rescue operation has been halted," she added in an emailed statement.
Anton Kovalishin, a spokesman for the emergencies ministry in the Komi region, told AFP a new explosion in the early hours of Sunday killed five rescue workers and a miner.
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