YENAKIYEVO, Ukraine (AFP) -- Twenty-three miners were found alive Monday in a Ukrainian coal mine, more than 24 hours after they were trapped deep underground by a huge explosion, a rescue official said.

Thirteen miners were still being sought by rescuers, mine safety agency spokeswoman Marina Nikitina told AFP.
“The rescuers are in contact with 21 miners, who are 875 meters (2,870 feet) below the surface. All are doing well.... Four of them are being brought to the surface,” Nikitina said.
Earlier Monday, one body was recovered from the blast and two surviving miners were brought to the surface. The two were in hospital and told reporters they were doing well.
But around 200 rescuers continued to search through the dust and rubble, the emergency situations ministry said, while flood waters were rising in the mine as water pumps had been damaged by the blast.
“The rescuers are doing everything possible and even impossible to assist other possible survivors,” Nikitina said. “The water is rising, the groundwater pumps have been destroyed.”
The blast occurred early Sunday at the mine in Yenakiyevo, 60 kilometers (40 miles) east of the regional capital Donetsk, the latest in a series of industrial accidents that have blighted Ukraine's mining industry.
It caused an inferno that even scorched buildings on the surface around the mine's entrances. Rescue workers were seen picking over the ruins of buildings at the mine, one of Ukraine's oldest, opened in 1958.
Five people on the surface were injured, including three women operating the elevator shaft who suffered serious burns, Nikitina said.
The mine was closed on Saturday due to safety violations and only a skeleton staff was working at the time of the blast, according to the emergency situations ministry.
But some miners told Ukraine's Kanal 5 television that work continued as usual into Sunday morning in spite of the closure.
“If the mine was up and running and coal was being produced in spite of the closure the public prosecutor will get involved and punishment will no doubt be severe,” said Deputy Prime Minister Olexander Turchinov, Interfax news agency reported.
Police closed off the mine and journalists were only allowed to enter the administrative building.
Relatives of the trapped miners gathered in a nearby building, several complaining of a lack of information about the men.
Work had been suspended at 20 mines in the region following an explosion on May 23 that killed 11 people, one of a series of disasters to strike the region's ageing pits in recent years.
In November last year, a gas explosion at the Zasiadko mine in Donetsk killed 101 miners. That accident was the worst of its kind in this former Soviet republic.