At least 80 injured in port explosion at Iran's Bandar Abbas
At least 80 people have been injured and transported to the hospital in a massive explosion and fire strike that hit the Shahid Rajaee port in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday. The Crisis Management Headquarters immediately declared an alert in all hospitals in Bandar Abbas, the agency said. The port's activities were suspended to extinguish the fire and considering the large number of port employees, "many people were probably injured or even killed in the incident," the agency added. National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company said the blast didn't impact energy facilities. "The cause of this incident was the explosion of several containers stored in the Shahid Rajaee Port wharf area. We are currently evacuating and transferring the injured to medical centres," a local crisis management official told state TV. A local official told Reuters that the reason behind the explosions was not yet known. The blast occurred as Iran began a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman. The distance between Bandar Abbas and the Omani shoreline is approximately 84 kilometers, underscoring the city's strategic proximity to the Gulf nation. Bandar Abbas, the capital of Hormozgan Province, is Iran's principal southern port city, strategically located on the northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz. The city's prominence is further underscored by the presence of the Shahid Rajaee port, which handles a significant portion of Iran's container traffic and is equipped to accommodate large vessels. The blast shattered windows within a radius of several kilometres, Iranian media said, with footage shared online showing a mushroom cloud forming following the explosion. In 2020, computers at the same port were hit by a cyberattack that caused massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility. The Washington Post had reported that Iran's arch-foe Israel appeared to be behind that incident as retaliation for an earlier Iranian cyberattack.
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