UPDATE - President Lech Kaczyński declared two days of national mourning stating at 06.00 CET Monday morning following Friday’s methane explosion in a colliery in Silesia in which 13 miners died.
Forty miners are still being treated for burns in hospitals in the south of the country - many are in a critical condition.
Twelve miners died on Friday, with another succumbing to his injuries on Saturday bringing the death toll to 13.
Eighteen of the injured are in the Burns Treatment Center in Siemianowice. Some have 90 degree burns of their body and respiratory tracts.
National flags will fly at half-mast for two days and entertainment events are to be cancelled, informed the President's Office.
A special commission has started an investigation into the causes of the disaster which occurred when methane gas ignited and a fire ball swept through the pit shafts in the Wujek-Slask coal mine.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who came to the site of the tragedy on Friday evening, said that a full investigation is being launched into the circumstances that led to the disaster.
The TVN commercial news channel showed a video on Saturday in which an anonymous miner said that methane detectors in the mine had been reset to boost coal output. The Public Prosecutor is looking at the claims.
Since Poland regained independence national mourning has been declared twenty times including twelve in the last twelve years – six times during the presidency of Aleksander Kwaśniewski and six during the term of Lech Kaczynski.
In the last three years the national mourning was declared after the tragic crash of a Polish coach in France in 2007, when twenty people died in a military place crash in Miroslawiec in 2008 and last April when the fire at a homeless hostel in Kamień Pomorski claimed the lives of twenty one people. (mk/pg/DI)