Alwaght- At least 35 miners have been killed and scores of others have been injured in a coal mine explosion in the northeastern Iranian province of Golestan the country’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Ali Rabiei confirmed.
The blast occurred at 12:45 p.m. local time (0815 GMT) in the Zemestanyurt mine when workers tried to jump-start a locomotive.
Authorities said Thursday that 22 bodies have been recovered from the mine following the Wednesday explosion near the provincial city of Azadshahr.
Hamidreza Montazeri, deputy head of Golestan Province emergency, said that 25 people, who had entered the mine to help the trapped miners, had been taken to hospital due to gas inhalation.
Later on Wednesday, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran's Emergency Center, corrected earlier reports about the number of miners trapped in the collapsed mine. Noting that the exploded mine consisted of two sections, he added that 40 miners were trapped at one section of the coal mine, while 30-40 others were trapped at another section.
“One of the injured miners is in critical condition and other injured miners are being treated for asphyxiation,” Kolivand said.
Kolivand added that the mine blast had injured 30 people, of whom nine had been hospitalized in Azadshahr and the rest sent to three hospitals in the provincial capital city of Gonbad.
