Iranian authorities have raised the death toll to 25 and the number of injured to around 1,100 in the massive explosion that occurred last Saturday at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, in the south of the country, according to the latest figures released early Sunday morning.
The president of the Supreme Court of Hormozgan province (of which Bandar Abbas is the capital), Mojtaba Ghahremani, has detailed the number of dead, of whom a dozen have already been provisionally identified: eight men and two women. Regarding the injured, Iranian government spokesperson Fateme Mohayerani confirmed on her social media account that 1,139 people “have been sent to medical centers,” many of them to the provinces of Shiraz and Larestan by air.
Hours earlier, Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni put the death toll at more than 750 and reported that at least 200 had been discharged, while another 300 remained hospitalized, according to an earlier report reported by Iran’s official news agency, IRNA.
Regarding the cause of the explosion, Mohayerani stated that President Masoud Pezeshkian had ordered a “rapid investigation into the incident” and urged “waiting until the necessary expert work is carried out to determine the causes of the accident and thus avoid speculative statements.”
For its part, the port’s Customs Office issued a statement this Saturday indicating that the cause of the explosion was likely a fire that started in a chemical warehouse, which would have triggered a chain reaction in other warehouses containing flammable materials.
Images captured by Iranian official media show a column of smoke hundreds of meters high, and the explosion has been felt in cities miles away.
Minister Momeni, the Iranian government’s eyes and ears at the scene of the tragedy, appeared before the media today to call for calm and assure everyone that 80 percent of the fire caused by the explosion “is already under control.” He hopes to declare the extinguishing work complete in the coming hours.
The explosion occurred specifically at the Shahid Rajaee Port, one of the two halves of the Port of Bandar Abbas and one of the largest in the region. It is a vital hub for Iranian trade, handling more than half of the country’s seaborne exports and imports, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.
It is also strategically important, as it is located on the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for approximately 26 percent of global oil trade. It is connected to Iran’s national rail and highway networks, linking maritime trade with the country’s industrial centers and serving as a transit route for exports across Iran’s borders.
