"There are no survivors, five people are dead," the spokesperson Oana Stoicuta told AFP yesterday.
"It's a tragedy down there...," the mayor of Uricani, Danut Buhaescu, told Mediafax news agency. Earlier, an official, Horia Radu, had said the five were electricians had been working on an electrical installation when the blast happened. It occurred at a depth of around 400 metres, mine officials said.
"At 14:30 (12:30 GMT) the workers said they had finished their job but some ten minutes later we smelt smoke coming out of the ventilation system," Stoicuta said. A rescue team found the bodies five hours later. No other workers were in the mine at the time of the accident, as mining operations were halted for the week-end.
"The most difficult part of the operation will start now, as the bodies will have to be retrieved and brought to the surface," the manager of the local coal mining company, Constantin Jujan, said.
Interior Minister Train Igas arrived at the mine soon after the blast and met the relatives of the victims. Igas said it was too early to know what had caused the explosion but added that an investigation was under way.
The Uricani coal mine is situated in the Jiu Valley, the most important mining area still operating in Romania. The mine employs some 800 people and is one of the oldest in the country.
Economy ministry official Florin Staicu said yesterday the mine would be closed down by 2018 as part of a mining sector restructuring plan overseen by the World Bank. Since this programme Bank started in the late 1990s, the number of Jiu Valley miners has been slashed from 60,000 to 8,800 currently, according to trade unions.
Yesterday's accident is the most serious since two blasts in the Petrila mine, also in the Jui Valley region, in November 2008, killed 13 people.