Twenty-one people have been killed in an explosion in a coal mine in northern Iran today, 40 miners remain trapped in the mine, state media reported.
“Twenty-one bodies of workers who were killed in the explosion have been taken out of the mine …So far there have been 69 injured,” a regional official in Golestan province told the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
The trapped miners are believed to be 1,800 metres underground at the Zemestan-Yurt mine, near Azadshahr in the northern province of Golestan.
The blast occurred at 12:45 local time (07:45 GMT) in the Zemestanyurt coal mine in Golestan.