MOSCOW - A methane blast in a coal mine in the south Siberian town of Osinniki Saturday has killed at least 46 people, MosNews reports.

46 bodies have been recovered from the mine, but emergency workers are still trying to find one last miner trapped in the ruins, Valentin Bubnov, a spokesman for the emergency services working at the scene of the incident, told Newsru.com. He said it has not been determined whether the missing miner is dead or alive.

Official reports place the number of those killed at 43, however. NTV television reports, meanwhile, that 33 bodies have already been identified.

The blast took place at about 6:55 a.m. local time on Saturday, in the Taizhina mine in Kemerovo region, which borders the mountains of southern Siberia. Although a state committee is still working to determine the causes of the accident, the explosion is thought to have been caused by methane emissions at a depth of about 500 meters, where construction work was being carried out, Gazeta.ru reported.

According to media reports, cave-ins are still endangering emergency workers who have been searching the mine for the past two days.

Meanwhile, medical personnel and psychologists are working with the families of the victims, and Tuesday has been declared a day of mourning in Osinniki.

At a televised Easter ceremony in Moscow, Aleksei II, the Russian Orthodox patriarch, said Russians' thoughts were "first of all with those who are underground, those who died, and with their families".