A massive explosion and fire rocked a port Saturday in southern Iran purportedly linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant, killing 14 people and injuring around 750 others.
Helicopters and aircraft dumped water from the air on the raging fire through the night into Sunday morning at the Shahid Rajaee port. The explosion occurred just as Iran and the United States met Saturday in Oman for the third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, reports AP from MUSCAT, Oman.
State media offered the casualty figures. But there were few details on what sparked the blaze just outside of Bandar Abbas, causing other containers to reportedly explode.
The port took in a shipment of the missile fuel chemical in March, the private security firm Ambrey said. The fuel is part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran first reported in January by the Financial Times. The chemical used to make solid propellant for rockets 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 analyzed by The Associated Press put one of the vessels believed to be carrying the chemical in the vicinity in March, as Ambrey said. Iran hasn’t acknowledged taking the shipment. The Iranian mission to the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
It’s unclear why Iran wouldn’t 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. However, Israel did target Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses industrial mixers to create solid fuel.
Social media footage of the explosion on Saturday at Shahid Rajaei saw reddish-hued smoke rising from the fire just before the detonation. That suggests a chemical compound being involved in the blast — like in the Beirut explosion.
The wounded have been transferred to nearby medical centers, Babak Yektaparast, spokesman for the country’s Emergency Medical Services Organization.
Yektaparast added that 90 hospital beds in Shiraz, the capital city of the neighboring Fars province, have been ready for the hospitalization of those potentially wounded in the incident, reports Xinhua from TEHRAN.
According to China’s Consulate General in Bandar Abbas, three Chinese citizens sustained minor injuries in the explosion. They are now in good condition after receiving medical treatment.
In an earlier report, the official news agency IRNA said the blast occurred at a gas tank in the port, sending a huge column of smoke into the sky and causing extensive damage to nearby buildings and cars.
In remarks to Fars news agency, Hossein Zafari, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Organization, said the blast was caused by chemical materials in a container at the port.
Meanwhile, the Iranian government’s spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerani, warned against any “hasty speculations” about the cause of the incident before relevant authorities complete the investigations. She added that what had been confirmed so far was that there were containers, probably with chemical materials, at a corner of the port.
Rapid reaction and rescue teams have been dispatched to the scene, and all port activities have been suspended, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, adding that the number of injured is likely increasing. ■
