Iran Port Blast Death Toll Rises to 25
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The death toll from a massive explosion that rocked Iran’s southern Shahid Rajaei Port on Saturday has risen to 25, while nearly 800 people have been injured.
Director general of the Justice Ministry’s office at the Hormozgan Province announced on Sunday that the catastrophic blast has killed 25 people so far.
A number of the injured have been taken to other cities, including Shiraz.
On Sunday, a dense plume of smoke continued to rise from the Shahid Rajaei port as rescue teams operated throughout the night.
The schools in Bandar Abbas, located at a distance of 20 km from the blast site, have been closed on Sunday.
A spokesperson for Iran's crisis management organization has apparently attributed the explosion to the poor quality of storage of chemicals in containers at the strategic port in southern Iran.
“The cause of the explosion was the chemicals inside the containers,” Hossein Zafari told ILNA.
He noted that the director general of crisis management had already given warnings to the port authorities during visits and had cautioned against the possibility of danger.
Officials said although chemicals had likely caused the explosion, it was not still possible to ascertain the exact reason.
National Iranian Oil Products Refining and Distribution Company has issued a statement, saying the oil facilities in the nearby yards were not affected by the blast.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has called for a probe into the incident and dispatched Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni to the disaster site.
The interior minister said the top priority was to save lives as efforts were in progress to extinguish the fire and prevent it from spreading to the other areas, packed with containers and goods.
Shahid Rajaei Port is a commercial hub of Iran that handles container traffic and also has oil tanks and other petrochemical facilities.
