Rescuers find 11 Russian miners

NOVOSHAKHTINSK, Russia -- Search crews blasted through solid rock to rescue 11 of 13 coal miners who emerged covered in soot Wednesday after six days trapped in a deep shaft in southern Russia. One miner died underground and another remained missing, emergency officials said.\nRescuers reached the men Wednesday morning after drillers punched through to the pit face where the miners had sought refuge following a flood. Entering the chamber, the rescuers found a note scrawled on a ventilation pipe, showing in which direction the miners had moved, NTV television reported.\n"The guys looked fine for people who have been trapped in a mine for six days. They came out themselves," said Alexander Smetalin, one of the rescuers. "They were found in the northern part of the mine. They were lying there all together."\nRescued miner Vasily Karlov said conditions had become increasingly desperate in the last hours before the rescue.\n"We felt that the water level was rising and there was little oxygen and people were not feeling well," he said from a hospital bed.\n"When we saw the rescuers, it was like the appearance of Christ before the people," said another of the rescued miners, Vasily Avdeyev.\n"We had nothing to eat. I delivered a speech saying that a 20-day fast has not ever hurt anyone and it is good for the health," added Avdeyev, who was the mine's director and had been trapped with the others.\nSmetalin said that the miners had climbed an incline in the shaft in the Zapadnaya mine that kept them above the level of the icy water. The missing miner apparently had left the others in hopes of finding a way out, and rescuers were continuing to search for him, officials said.\nMost of the miners walked out of the shaft on their own after being carried or led about 1 1/2 miles underground, emergency officials said. Black dust coated their faces and thick blankets were draped over their shoulders.\nAs the miners emerged from the shaft, relatives who had kept vigil outside the mine cried out their names. Doctors, policemen and rescue workers surrounded the men who were hustled into waiting ambulances, and some reached out to pat the miners on the back in a restrained show of relief.\nThe rescued miners' eyes looked blank; none whose faces were captured by waiting photographers cracked a smile.\nThe last live miner was carried out of the shaft on a stretcher shortly after noon. Rescue workers said he apparently was suffering from exposure but was conscious and responsive.\nAs the rescue operation unfolded in southern Russia, five miners were killed in a mine explosion in the Primorye region of the Russian Far East. Sixty-six other miners were rescued after the blast in the town of Partizansk, said Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry. The blast was due to a buildup of methane and was blamed on lax safety practices, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.\nAfter learning of the rescue and the Far East blast, President Vladimir Putin told a Kremlin meeting that to his regret, mine accidents in Russia "were taking on a systematic character."\nThe men who were rescued from the Zapadnaya mine were among 71 working some 2,625 feet below ground Oct. 23 when water from a subterranean lake leaked into a shaft above them, blocking their way to the surface. Twenty-five managed to escape, and 33 other miners who had been trapped by the flood were rescued Saturday.\nEmergency workers had blasted and drilled through solid rock from an adjacent mine to reach the miners. Hundreds of tons of rock, soil and reinforced concrete pillars had been dumped into the shaft to stanch the flood.