In the wake of an explosion at a coal mine in Tabas, the Iranian regime’s official news agency IRNA reported that 51 miners lost their lives in this incident.
Reports also provided figures for the injured miners, stating that 20 workers have been wounded so far.
The deadliest mining accident in Iran prior to this was the explosion at the Yurt mine in 2017, which claimed 44 lives. However, the Saturday night explosion in Tabas has now surpassed this record as the deadliest labor incident in the country.
Javad Ghanat, the governor of South Khorasan, initially announced on the morning of Sunday, September 22, that 30 people had died and 17 were injured. However, by noon, the death toll had risen to 51.
The explosion occurred around 9 p.m. on Saturday, and initially, Iranian media reported only one death and indicated that other workers trapped in the mine tunnel were unreachable.
According to the South Khorasan governor, the explosion occurred in two blocks, where “22 people were working in Block B and 47 in Block C.”
The 30 deaths reported earlier were all from Block C, and there was no information about the 22 workers in Block B.
No detailed report on the cause of the incident has been published yet. However, on Saturday night, the head of the Tabas Labor Department stated that the explosion was caused by a “methane gas leak in Block C of Madanjo Company.”
On Sunday, Javad Ghanat added: “Due to the methane gas leak in Tunnels C and B of the Tabas Madanjo mine, the workers suffocated from the gas. So far, 30 workers have died, and 17 have been taken to hospitals.”
The number of labor accidents in Iran is high, mainly due to substandard equipment and unsafe working conditions. According to the Forensic Medicine Organization, in 2023, there were 2,115 labor-related deaths and more than 27,000 injuries.
In September last year, a gas explosion in one of the tunnels of the Tarzeh mine in Damghan resulted in the deaths of six workers.
In the explosion at the Yurt coal mine on May 3, 2017, 44 miners were killed. A fact-finding committee later attributed responsibility for the accident to the employer.
Mohammad Mojtahedzadeh, the head of Iran’s Coal Association, reacted to the incident by stating that coal mining equipment in the country is very outdated.
