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A BLAST CAUSED by a gas leak at an Iranian coal mine has killed at least 51 people in one of the country’s deadliest work accidents in years.
“The number of dead workers increased to 51″ in the explosion at the Tabas mine in eastern Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported, revising an earlier death toll of 30.
It added that 20 other people were injured.
The explosion occurred at around 9pm local time last night when around 70 workers were present at the site in South Khorasan province, IRNA said.
According to the report, a leak of methane gas led to the blast in two blocks of the mine, which is owned by private Iranian firm Madanjoo.
State TV broadcast footage of ambulances and helicopters arriving at Tabas to transport the injured to hospital.
Online footage carried by IRNA showed bodies of some of the victims, wearing their work uniform, carried out of the site on mining carts.
South Khorasan governor Javad Ghenaat told state TV that rescue teams were working to recover the remaining bodies.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, in remarks carried state TV before departing for the UN General Assembly in New York, offered his condolences to the families of the victims and ordered a probe into the deadly incident.
“Unfortunately, we learned that an accident occurred in one of the coal mines in Tabas and a number of our compatriots lost their lives. I offer my condolences to their respected families,” Pezeshkian said.
His first vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, spoke with cabinet members to ensure “emergency follow-up” and support for the victims and their families, IRNA said.
Iran’s Red Crescent said search and rescue operations were underway in the mine, where some workers remained trapped.
According to IRNA, they were about 250 metres below the surface, cut off from rescuers by chambers that had filled up with concentrated methane gas.
“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 on.
Last year, an explosion at a coal mine in the northern city of Damghan killed six people, also likely the result of methane leak 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 anger toward Iranian authorities.
Mineral-rich Iran has around 1.5 billion tons of proven coal reserves, according to state media.
The Tabas mine covers an area of more than 30,000 square kilometres (nearly 11,600 square miles) and holds mass reserves of coking and thermal coal, according to IRNA.
It is “considered the richest and largest coal area in Iran,” IRNA said.
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Juice your own! Cheaper and a lot less sugar!
There smoothies are loaded with as much suger as fizzy drinks terrible stuff
Natural fruit sugar is healthier than the sugar in fizzy drinks, not really a good comparison
On the contrary! Too much fruit, especially when juiced and when fibre is removed causes a huge spike in blood sugar.
Boycott apples and oranges, they are full of sugar!
Get a grip folks, everything in moderation, live and let live etc.
This stuff is absolutely loaded with suger…far from innoncent!
It was always rank slop filled with sugar. And it still is.
It’s an interesting business case study , not really as strange a move as it may appear though as Tropicana orange juice was taken over by Pepsi many years earlier so Coke was just responding to the growth in markets for juices and smoothies , plus they had missed the mark when Redbull stole a lead in the energy drink market under their nose so buying innocent made perfect sense for them
It has all to do with selling sugar……America is awash with cheap corn syrup (fructose), and anything that value adds to this cheap form of sugar is fair game for the likes of Coca Cola.
If you look at the aisles in somewhere like Dunnes Stores, there is a full row of biscuits, a full aisle of sweets and chocolate, and ever increasing amounts of pop scattered around the store.
In the fridge section, you now have Smoothies creeping in beside the fruit juices. There is an ever increasing percentage of floor area being devoted to foods based on this cheap sugar.
It can be dressed up with fancy fruit and marketing and labelling the thing Innocent, but it is still a very unhealthy form of sugar.
The chap says he goes over to Brazil and buys up almost all the oranges , where are these oranges grown ? Are they grown on land that is cleared rainforest.
Things go better with coke.
They’re milking the juice.
Far Cue. The Chinese snooker champion
I think Coca-Cola are an unethical company so I try to keep my spend on their products as low as possible. I had an Innocent smoothie once & that was enough. Over-priced shite
Sugar trade. More channels fr CocaCola to push disguised sugar. Innocent…yeah right.
So don’t buy it.
As do bosca ?
have your say