Thirty-three miners have died in a fire at a mine in the eastern Donetsk region in Ukraine.

Rescuers were struggling for hours to put out the blaze

Officials said 107 miners were underground when the fire broke early on Sunday at a depth of 570 metres at the Ukraina pit in the town of Ukrainsk.

Rescue crews working at the site managed to bring 74 workers to safety, but were unable to reach the 33 who are believed to have died of smoke inhalation.

The cause of the accident is not known, but Ukraine's ageing coal pits have a bad safety record, and have been described by the World Bank as the world's most dangerous mines.

Funding cuts since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 made the situation worse. An average 300 miners die each year in the industry.

Government probe

"Thirty people were in a trolley that was going down and three others were found near it, ... killed by smoke inhalation," Oleksiy Pechenkin, spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry, said.

The spokesman said that firefighters were still struggling to battle the blaze as flames and thick smoke prevented their efforts.

A special government commission headed by Deputy Prime Minister Oleh Dubyna flew to Donetsk to investigate the accident.

In another mine accident on Saturday, a fire also broke out at a coalmine near the town of Kryvyi Rih, in the southeastern Ukraine.

The spokesman said all 60 miners were safely brought to the surface and the blaze was extinguished.