SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Jon Gambrell
Muscat, Oman: An Iranian port city rocked by a massive explosion on Saturday that killed 14 and injured more than 750 people received a shipment of a chemical used in missile fuel last month, a private security firm says.
Helicopters dumped water from the air on the raging fire hours after the initial explosion, which happened at the Shahid Rajaei port in southern Iran, just as Iran and the United States met in Oman for the third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program. Nearby cities also felt the blast.
Firefighters work as black smoke rises in the sky after a massive explosion rocked a port near the southern city of Bandar Abbas, Iran.Credit: AP
No one in Iran outright suggested that the explosion came from an attack. However, even Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led the talks, acknowledged earlier this week that “our security services are on high alert given past instances of attempted sabotage and assassination operations designed to provoke a legitimate response”.
Few details have been made public about what sparked the blaze just outside of Bandar Abbas, which burned into Saturday night, causing other containers to reportedly explode.
But the port took in a shipment of missile fuel chemical in March, the private security firm Ambrey said. The fuel is part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran first reported in January by the Financial Times.
The chemical used to make solid propellant for rockets 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 analysed by The Associated Press put one of the vessels believed to be carrying the chemical in the vicinity in March, as Ambrey said. Iran hasn’t acknowledged taking the shipment. The Iranian mission to the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
It’s unclear why Iran wouldn’t have moved the chemicals from the port, particularly after a port blast in Beirut 2020, also linked to chemicals, which killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6000. That explosion was caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate. However, Israel has targeted Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses industrial mixers to create solid fuel.
Social media footage of the explosion on Saturday at Shahid Rajaei saw reddish-hued smoke rising from the fire just before the detonation. That suggests a chemical compound being involved in the blast, like in the Beirut explosion.
Black smoke rises in the sky after a massive explosion rocked a port near the southern city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday.Credit: Razieh Pudat/ISNA via AP
“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!”
On Saturday 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, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the air. Schools and offices in Bandar Abbas will be closed on Sunday, the first day of the working week in the Middle East.
Shahid Rajaei has been a target before. A 2020 cyberattack attributed to Israel targeted the port. It came after Israel said that it thwarted a cyberattack targeting its water infrastructure, which it attributed to Iran. Israeli officials didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding Saturday’s explosion.
Social media videos showed black billowing smoke after the blast. Others showed glass blown out of buildings kilometres away from the epicentre of the explosion. State media footage showed the injured crowding into at least one hospital, with ambulances arriving as medics rushed one person by on a stretcher.
The Interior Ministry said it had launched an investigation into the blast, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered his condolences to those affected.
Shahid Rajaei port is about 1050 kilometres southeast of Iran’s capital, Tehran, on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 per cent of all oil traded passes.
AP
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