At least 25 people killed and 800 injured in Iran port explosion
Saturday’s blast was reportedly linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant.
At least 25 people have died and 800 others were injured after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port in southern Iran.
Saturday’s blast was reportedly linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant.
Helicopters dumped water from the air on the fire hours after the initial explosion, which happened at the Shahid Rajaei port just as Iran and the United States met on Saturday in Oman for the third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme.
No one in Iran outright suggested the explosion came from an attack but even Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who led the talks, on Wednesday acknowledged that “our security services are on high alert given past instances of attempted sabotage and assassination operations designed to provoke a legitimate response”.
State media offered the casualty figures, saying authorities have identified only 10 of the dead, including two women.
There were few details on what sparked the blaze just outside of Bandar Abbas, which burned into Saturday night, causing other containers to explode.
The port took in a shipment of “sodium perchlorate rocket fuel” in March, the private security firm Ambrey said.
The fuel is part of a shipment from China by two vessels to Iran, first reported in January by The Financial Times.
The fuel was going to be used to replenish Iran’s missile stocks, which had been depleted by its direct attacks on Israel during the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“The fire was reportedly the result of improper handling of a shipment of solid fuel intended for use in Iranian ballistic missiles,” Ambrey said.
Ship-tracking data put one of the vessels believed to be carrying the chemical in the vicinity in March, as Ambrey said.
Iran has not acknowledged taking the shipment and the Iranian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
It is unclear why Iran would not have moved the chemicals from the port, particularly after the Beirut port blast in 2020.
That explosion, caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,000 others.
Israel did target Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses industrial mixers to create solid fuel.
Social media footage of the explosion at Shahid Rajaei showed reddish-hued smoke rising from the fire just before the detonation.
That suggests a chemical compound being involved in the blast, as in the Beirut explosion.
“Get back, get back! Tell the gas (truck) to go!” a man in one video shouted just before the blast.
“Tell him to go, it’s going to blow up! Oh God, this is blowing up! Everybody evacuate! Get back! Get back!”
On Saturday night, the state-run IRNA news agency said the Customs Administration of Iran blamed a “stockpile of hazardous goods and chemical materials stored in the port area” for the blast, without elaborating.
An aerial shot released by Iranian media after the blast showed fires burning at multiple locations in the port, with authorities later warning about air pollution from chemicals such as ammonia, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the air. Schools in Bandar Abbas were closed on Sunday.
