DUBAI (Reuters) – A large explosion rocked Shahid Rajaee port in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, with at least 47 people injured after the blast, state media reported.
The blast occurred as Iran began a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman, although the cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.
“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.
Fars news agency reported that 47 people were injured according to initial estimates.
Semi-official Tasnim news agency added that the port’s activities were suspended to extinguish the fire and that considering the large number of port employees “many people were probably injured or even killed in the incident.”
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.
(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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