A massive explosion and fire that rocked a port on Saturday in southern Iran, allegedly linked to an expedition of a chemical ingredient used to make a faergol of missile, killed at least 25 people and injured about 800 others, officials said.
Helicopters and planes threw water on fire that rages overnight until Sunday morning at the port of Shaid Rajaei. The explosion occurred as Iran and the United States met on Saturday in Oman For the third series of negotiations on the Nuclear Nuclear in advance of Tehran.
Meysam Mirzadeh / AP
While nobody in Iran suggested that the explosion came from an attack, even the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Arabhchi, who led talks, admitted Wednesday that “our security services are on high alert given the past cases of attempted sabotage and assassination designed to provoke a legitimate response”.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian It is said that Sunday, according to the state media.
“The president is heading to the region to examine the last situation concerning the explosion of the port of Shahid Rajaee in Bandar Abbas,” said State TV.
Mohammad Rasoul Moradi / Anadolu via Getty Images 
The state media offered the figures of the victims, saying that the authorities were only identified 10 of the dead, including two women.
Meanwhile, State TV reported that the fire was under control and will be fully extinguished Sunday later. He also said that the activities have resumed the port, showing images of containers from a discharged commercial ship.
CBS News Partner Network BBC News reported These verified videos seemed to show an increasing fire before the explosion. Social media videos showed black smoke smoke after the explosion. Others have shown that blown glass in buildings miles from the epicenter of the explosion.
There were few details on what triggered the fire just outside Bandar Abbas, exploding other containers, BBC News reported.
Mohammad Rasoul Moradi / Irna via AP) 
Private security company Ambrey said the port had received chemicals on missile fuel in March. He is part of an expedition of Chinese ammonium perchlorate by two ships to Iran, reported for the first time in January by the Financial Times. The fuel was going to be used to reconstruct the missile stocks of Iran, which had been exhausted by its direct attacks against Israel during War with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“The fire would have been the result of poor management of a solid fuel expedition intended to be used in Iranian ballistic missiles,” said Ambrey.
In a first reaction on Sunday, the spokesman for the Iranian ministry of the Ministry of Defense, Reza Talaeinik, denied information that the fuel of the missiles was imported into the port.
“No kind of imported deposit and export for fuel or military request was (or) of the port site,” he told State TV by phone. He called foreign relationships on baseless missile fuel.
The monitoring data of ships analyzed by the Associated Press placed one of the ships that would carry the chemical product nearby in March, as Ambrey said. Iran has not admitted to having sent the shipment.
Meysam Mirzadeh / AP 
We do not know why Iran would not have moved the chemicals of the port, in particular after The port of Beirut Blast in 2020. This explosion, caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,000 others. However, Israel has targeted Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses Industrial mixers to create solid fuel.
Images of the social media of the explosion on Saturday in Shahid Rajaei saw reddish shade rising fire just before detonation. This suggests that a chemical compound is involved in the explosion.
“Return to get back! Say gas (truck) to go!” A man in a video shouted just before the explosion. “Tell him to go, it will explode! Oh my God, it explodes! Everyone evacuates! Come back!” Come back! “
On Saturday evening, the IRNA news agency managed by the State declared that the administration of customs of Iran blamed a “storage of dangerous goods and chemical materials stored in the port zone” for the explosion, without developing.
Mohammad Rasoul Moradi / IRNA / WANA (press agency in Western Asia) via Reuters 
Shahid Rajaei has already been a target. A 2020 cyber attack attributed to Israel targeted the port. He came after Israel said he had thwarted a cyber attack targeting his water infrastructure, which she attributed to Iran.
Social media videos showed black smoke smoke after the explosion. Others have shown blown glass outside the miles, or kilometers away from the epicenter of the explosion. Images of the state’s media showed the injured entry into at least one hospital, the ambulances arriving while the doctors rushed on a stretcher.
Hasanzadeh, the head of provincial disaster management, said state television earlier that the explosion came from containers from the port of Shahid Rajaei in the city, without developing. State television also indicated that there had been a collapse of the building caused by the explosion, although no other detail has been proposed.
The Interior Ministry said it launched an explosion investigation. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also offered condolences to people affected by the explosion.
The port of Shahid Rajaei in the province of Hormozan is around 650 miles in the southeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran, on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the passes of oil.
