178 Men Feared Dead in Yugoslav Mine Blast : Disaster: The explosion cut off air from the surface and collapsed corridors to the exit.

A gas explosion Sunday ripped through a coal mine in central Yugoslavia, trapping 178 miners who were feared dead.

Rescue workers dug desperately through twisted metal and rubble to try to free the men, who were buried 1,600 feet below the surface, but they said there was no chance of finding anyone alive.

Rescue worker Stevo Mitrovic, his face blackened by coal dust, said tearfully: “I don’t think there are any survivors. Everything has collapsed down there. It’s horrible!”

The miners at the 40-year-old Kreka lignite mine in Dobrnja, 85 miles southwest of Belgrade, had gone back to work Friday after a strike over pay and conditions.

Mine officials said the blast could turn out to be Yugoslavia’s worst mining disaster, surpassing an accident at Bosnia-Herzegovina that cost 128 lives in 1965. They said the explosion was probably caused by methane, coal dust, or a combination of both. Witnesses said the blast sent huge chunks of concrete flying on the surface, and that the mine’s entrance was blocked by twisted metal.

Rescue workers said the blast cut off ventilation below, and that huge boulders were blocking a four-mile passageway to the miners.

“The rescue operation is extremely difficult. The corridor is buried under rubble. Temperatures are very high and the corridors are full of dangerous gases,” said Vidan Krsmanovic, one of the organizers.

“Further rescue efforts depend on us being able to get ventilation into the mine,” he said. “The explosion . . . caused a cave-in in the area where the miners were.” As to whether anyone would survive, he said: “There is no point even talking about it.”

Tanjug news agency said that eight bodies had been brought out, but Krsmanovic denied this. Two men who had been near the surface were carried out alive and were taken to a hospital with slight injuries.

President Borisav Jovic flew to the scene by helicopter and called for an immediate investigation and punishment if human error was found to be the cause of the explosion.

Ninety rescue workers wearing breathing apparatus were descending into the mine in groups of five as anxious relatives watched rescue efforts from behind a fence.

The Kreka operation, modernized in the 1980s, has been producing about 650,000 tons of lignite coal a year, Belgrade radio quoted mine officials as saying.