Death toll rises to at least 40 in massive port explosion in Iran heard 50km away

LAST UPDATE | 27 Apr

AT LEAST 40 people have died and 1,000 others were injured after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port in southern Iran, state TV has reported.

Fires are still blazing after the disastrous explosion yesterday, which was so powerful that it was felt and heard about 50 kilometres

The blast was reportedly linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant.

The port’s customs office said in a statement carried by state television that the explosion probably resulted from a fire that broke out at the hazardous and chemical materials storage depot. A regional emergency official said several containers had exploded.

Helicopters dumped water from the air on the fire hours after the initial explosion, which happened at the Shahid Rajaei port in the city of Bandar Abbas just as Iran and the United States met yesterday in Oman for the third round of negotiations over Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme.

The port took in a shipment of “sodium perchlorate rocket fuel” in March, 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 yesterday.

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 in Lebanon in 2020.

“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!”

Last night, the state-run IRNA news agency said that 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.

Additional reporting by AFP