A massive explosion and fire shook a port on Saturday in southern Iran, supposedly linked to a sending of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propeller, kill eight people and hurt another 750.
The helicopters threw water from the air in the furious fire hours after the initial explosion, which occurred in the port of Shahid Rajajai, like Iran and the United States with Saturday in Oman for the third round of negotiations on the quick advance of Tehran.
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No one in Iran directly suggested that the explosion came from an attack. However, on Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who directed the conversations, acknowledged that “our security services are on a maximum alert since they are adjusted to instances of sabotage attempt and murder operations designed by response.”
Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, gave the number of victims in an interview on state television. But there were few details about what caused the fire on the outskirts of Bandar Abbas, which burned until Saturday night, which caused other containers to explode.
The security firm says that the port received chemicals for missile fuel
The port in a “fuel of sodium perchlorate rockets” in March, said Private Security firm Ambrey. The fuel is part of a shipment from China by two ships to Iran reported for the first time in January for the Financial Times. The fuel would be used to rejoice the missile actions of Iran, which had exhausted their legs for their direct attacks against the duration of Israel, the war with Hamas in the Gaza strip.
In this photo, the firefighters of the news agency of the Republic of the Islamic Republic (IRNA) work as the black smoke rises in the sky after a mass explosion shook a port near the southern city of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Saturday. (Mohammad Rasoul Moradi/Irna through AP)
“According to the reports, the fire was the result of the inappropriate management of a solid fuel shipment for its use in Iranian ballistic missiles,” said Ambrey.
The ship tracking data analyzed by Associated Press put one of the vessels that is believed to carry the chemist in the vicinity in March, as Ambrey said. Iran has not recognized the shipment. The Iranian mission before the United Nations did not respond to a request for comments on Saturday.
It is not clear why Iran would not have moved the chemicals of the port, particularly after the explosion of the port of Beirut in 2020. That explosion, caused by the lighting of hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, killed more than 200 people and wounded more than 6,000. However, Israel went to Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses industrial mixers to create solid fuel.
The images of the explosion of social networks on Saturday in Shahid Rajajai saw reddish smoke coming out of the fire just before the detonation. That suggests that a chemical compound is involved in the explosion, as in Beirut’s explosion.
“Return back! Return! Tell the gas (truck) leave!” A man in a video shouted just before the explosion. “Tell him, he will explode! Oh, God, this is exploiting! Everyone evacuates! Return! Go back! Return!”
On Saturday night, the Irna news agency said that the Iran Administration of Customs blamed a “material of dangerous goods and chemical materials stored in the port area” by the explosion, without elaborating.
An aerial shot published by the Iranian media after the explosion showed fires in multiple locations in the port, and the authorities then warn the air pollution of chemical products such as ammonia, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the air. Schools in Bandar Abbas will also be closed on Sunday.
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Shahid Rajaei has been a goal before. A 2020 cyber attack attributed to Israel went to the port. It occurred after Israel said it frustrated a cyber attack aimed at its water infrastructure, which it attributed to Iran. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comments on Saturday’s explosion.
The social networks videos showed black and undulating smoke after the explosion. Others showed blown glass of the kilometers, or miles, far from the epicenter of the explosion. The images of the state media showed the overcrowding injured in at least one hospital, with ambulances arriving when Medicens ran a person on a stretcher.
Hasanzadeh, the provincial disaster management official, previously told state television that the explosion came from containers in the port of Shahid Rajajai in the city, without explaining. State TV also reported that a collapse of the building caused by the explosion had one leg, although no more details were sacrificed.
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The Interior Ministry said he launched an investigation into the explosion. Iranian President Masoud Peeshkian also offered his condolences to those affected in the explosion.
The port of Shahid Rajaei in the province of Hormozgan is about 650 miles to the southeast or the capital of Iran, Tehran, in the Hortuz Strait, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all passes traded with oil.