At least six die in mining accident in Spain

At least six people have died and another four seriously injured after a methane gas leak in Leon, north-west Spain on Monday.

The accident happened around 13:30 local time (1230 GMT) after which civil guards rushed the injured to a hospital on Leon.

It is currently not clear if more workers are trapped underground. The cause of the accident is still to be determined. It is currently thought miners opened a gas deposit that failed to explode and caused the release of the poisonous gas.

Spain's Minister of Industry Jose Manuel Soria will travel to Leon shortly to visit the site of the accident.

Santa Lucia is a small village of around 700 inhabitants and people from all over the region work in the mine, which belongs to the company Hullera Vasco-Leonesa. The accident happened in the Nueva Mina which has a depth of 694 meters and a width of 6.5 meters.

Work on excavating the mine began in 1992.

This is the worst accident to affect the Spanish mining industry since 14 miners died in a gas explosion in the northern region of Asturias in 1995.