ned a list of the dead on a wall at the mine offices.

"They will start bringing the bodies to the surface now," said one woman with tears welling in her eyes. "They say they have identified everyone."

The blast ripped through the mine at 0740 Moscow time (0340 GMT) when 217 people were below ground.

Russia's industrial safety watchdog said its inspectors had twice applied to have the Yubileynaya mine closed for safety violations, including some in the shaft at the centre of the blast, but were overruled by local courts.

Miners with grimy faces smoked nervously as a soft drizzle fell on the rusting and dilapidated Soviet-era mine buildings, surrounded by wooded hills.

Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev declared Saturday a day of mourning in the region. President Vladimir Putin, on a visit to Western Europe, expressed his condolences.

The Yubileynaya mine, which opened in 1966 and employs around 1,000 people, is about 40 km (25 miles) from the Ulyanovskaya pit where 110 people died in March.

That was Russia's worst mining accident since the fall of the Soviet Union and triggered a government inquiry that pointed to poor safety standards.

Both mines are operated by Yuzhkuzbassugol, a company that is 50 percent owned by its management, which has operational control, and 50 percent by steelmaker Evraz Group. Yuzhkuzbassugol declined to make immediate comment on Thursday's blast.

Evraz should take control of Yuzhkuzbassugol, Tuleyev said in televised comments. Evraz shares closed down 1.3 percent.

Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Britain's Chelsea soccer club, has a 41 percent stake in Evraz through his Millhouse investment vehicle.

PAY STRUCTURE

Russia's industrial safety agency RosTekhNadzor said it had started an investigation and that Yuzhkuzbassugol could have its licenses to operate Yubileynaya and other mines withdrawn.

"A working commission is at the mine. A decision on the recall of licenses can only be taken in accordance with the results of the commission's work," agency spokeswoman Svetlana Vinokurova said.

The pay structure in the Russian coal industry, where miners earn bonuses based on their output, encourages workers to cut corners on safety, said a mining trade union official.

Alexander Sergeyev, chairman of the Independent Trade Union of Russian Miners, said Yuzhkuzbassugol had reduced the proportion of wages that comes from bonuses after the March accident. "The tragedy at Yubileynaya is a consequence of the policies that were in place earlier," he said.

The Kemerovo region is the hub of Russia's coal mining industry. Around 3,000 km (2,000 miles) east of Moscow, the area is a sprawling network of soot-stained industrial towns built around mines and metalworks spewing out smoke.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin industrialized the area in the 1930s and many families have been mining coal in the region, known as the Kuzbass, since then.

Coal currently accounts for about 23 percent of Russian electricity production. Russia's coal industry employs about 250,000, of whom about 120,000 work underground.

(Reporting by Robin Paxton, Vera Kalian and Dmitry Solovyov)