Iran port blast death toll rises to 18, over 800 injured
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The death toll from a massive explosion and fire at a major Iranian port has climbed to 18, with over 800 people injured, Iranian state television reported on Sunday.
The blast occurred on Saturday at the Sina container yard, part of the key Shahid Rajaei port in Bandar Abbas, located more than 1,000 kilometres south of Tehran.
Emergency services confirmed the fire was now "under control but not extinguished," with thick black smoke still rising from the site, according to a state TV correspondent reporting live from the scene.
Authorities had initially reported 14 deaths before revising the figure. Most of the injured have been transferred to local hospitals for treatment, officials said.
The explosion, which hit the Shahid Rajaee section of the port, occurred as Iran began a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman, but there was no immediate indication of a link between the two events.
Hossein Zafari, a spokesperson for Iran's crisis management organisation, appeared to blame the explosion on poor storage of chemicals in containers at Shahid Rajaee.
"The cause of the explosion was the chemicals inside the containers," he told Iran's ILNA news agency.
"Previously, the Director General of Crisis Management had given warnings to this port during their visits and had pointed out the possibility of danger," Zafari said.
An Iranian government spokesperson, however, said that although chemicals had likely caused the blast, it was not yet possible to determine the exact reason.
A series of deadly incidents has hit Iranian energy and industrial infrastructure in recent years, with many, like Saturday's blast, blamed on negligence.
They have included refinery fires, a gas explosion at a coal mine, and an emergency repair incident at Bandar Abbas that killed one worker in 2023.
Iran has blamed some other incidents on its arch-foe Israel, which has carried out attacks on Iranian soil targeting Iran's nuclear programme in recent years and last year bombed the country's air defences.
Tehran said Israel was behind a February 2024 attack on Iranian gas pipelines, while in 2020 computers at Shahid Rajaee were hit by a cyberattack. The Washington Post reported that Israel appeared to be behind that incident as retaliation for an earlier Iranian cyberattack.
Israel has indicated it is nervous about the outcome of U.S.-Iran talks, demanding a full dismantlement of Iran's nuclear programme. Tehran says the programme is used solely for peaceful purposes, while international observers say it is getting closer to being able to build a bomb.
There was no immediate comment from Israel's military or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office when asked for comment on whether Israel was in any way involved in Saturday's explosion.
Oil facilities were not affected by the blast on Saturday, Iranian authorities said.
The National Iranian Petroleum Refining and Distribution Company said in a statement it had "no connection to refineries, fuel tanks, distribution complexes and oil pipelines."
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