At least 30 miners have been killed and 22 others are missing in an explosion at a coal mine in eastern Iran, Iranian media reported Sunday.
The explosion occurred on Saturday night due to the release of methane gas in one of the tunnels of a mine in the city of Tabas, in the southern province of Khorasan, said the director general of the crisis management body of the provincial government, Mohammad Ali Akhundi, according to the state news agency IRNA.
Akhundi said 30 people have died in the accident, while 17 injured have been rescued by rescue teams.
At the time of the accident, some 70 people were working at the mine and the Mehr agency reported that at least 22 people were missing.
Rescue teams are continuing their search efforts with at least 40 people working on the search.
Iran has seen several accidents in the country’s mining industry in recent years. In 2017, 42 people died after an explosion at a coal mine in northeastern Iran.
In 2013, 11 other miners died in two separate incidents, while in 2009, 20 miners died in separate incidents.
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