The blast occurred at 12:45 p.m. local time (0815 GMT) in the Zemestanyurt mine when workers tried to jump-start a locomotive.
Ali Rabiei, minister of cooperatives, labor and social welfare was quoted as saying by semi-official Tasnim news agency that 35 miners have died in the incident.
Iranian media said more than 30 of the injured were transferred to nearby hospitals.
The semi-official Fars news agency reported earlier that more than 50 workers were trapped in a two-kilometre-long tunnel filled with gas that hampered rescue efforts.
The mine has 500 workers and the explosion happened during a change of shift, Fars reported.
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16:16 (03.05.2017)
More than 50 miners were trapped after a huge explosion in a coal mine in northern Iran on Wednesday, and some were feared to have died, state media reported.
The reports said more than a dozen injured people had been transferred to hospital after the blast at 12:45 p.m. local time in the Zemestanyurt coal mine in Golestan province.
State news agency IRNA quoted a local official as saying some of the trapped miners may have died in the explosion. A rescue operation was under way.
Iran extracted 1.68 million tons of coal in 2016, an increase on previous years, thanks to an easing of international sanctions. It exports only a fraction of the coal and uses most of it in domestic steel production.
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