Around 70 people were working at the mine in Tabas at the time of the blast

Tehran: A methane leak sparked an explosion at a coal mine in eastern Iran, killing at least 19 people and injuring another 17, Iranian state television reported on Sunday.

The report said the deaths happened at a coal mine in Tabas, some 540 km southeast of the capital, Tehran.

Authorities were sending emergency personnel to the area after the blast late on Saturday, it said.

Around 70 people had been working there at the time of the blast.

Oil-producing Iran is also rich in a variety of minerals. It annually consumes some 3.5 million tonnes of coal but only extracts about 1.8 million tons from its mines per year. The rest is imported, often consumed in the country’s steel mills.

This is not the first disaster to strike Iran’s mining industry. In 2013, 11 workers were killed in two separate mining incidents.

In 2009, 20 workers were killed in several incidents. In 2017, a coal mine explosion killed at least 42 people. Lax safety standards and inadequate emergency services in mining areas are often blamed for the fatalities.