At least 51 people are dead and 20 injured after a blast at a coal mine in eastern Iran, Iranian media report.
Iranian state TV said a methane leak caused the blast late on September 21 at the mine in Tabas, some 540 kilometers southeast of the capital, Tehran. Twenty-four miners were believed to be trapped inside.
Around 70 people had been working there at the time of the blast.
Iran's new reformist President Masud Pezeshkian, preparing to travel to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, said he ordered all efforts be made to rescue those trapped and aid their families. He also said an investigation into the incident had begun.
The accident was caused by a methane gas explosion in the B and C blocks of the mine., which is run by the Madanjoo company, state media later reported.
"Seventy-six percent of the country's coal is provided from this region and around eight to 10 big companies are working in the region, including the Madanjoo company," the governor of South Khorasan Province, Ali Akbar Rahimi, told state TV on September 22.
Earlier, state TV broadcast footage of ambulances and helicopters arriving at the scene of the incident to transport the injured to hospitals.
Iran's Red Crescent said search-and-rescue operations were under way in the mine.
"Gas accumulation in the mine" has made the search operations difficult, local prosecutor Ali Nesaei was quoted by IRNA as saying.
"Currently, the priority is to provide aid to the injured and pull people from under the rubble," Nesaei said.
He added that "the negligence and fault of the relevant agents will be dealt with" later.
This is not the first disaster to strike Iran's mining industry.
Last year, an explosion at a coal mine in the northern city of Damghan killed six people, also likely the result of methane, according to local media.
In May 2021, two miners died in a collapse at the same site, local media reported at the time.
A blast in 2017 killed 43 miners in Azad Shahr city in northern Iran, triggering a wave of anger directed at the authorities.
Lax safety standards and inadequate emergency services in mining areas are often blamed for the accidents.
Besides its oil, Iran is also rich in a variety of minerals. Iran annually uses some 3.5 million tons of coal but only extracts about 1.8 million tons from its mines per year. The rest is imported, often used to fuel the country’s steel mills.