Cnn
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Four people were killed and more than 500 injured in a huge explosion at the port of Bandar Abbas in Southwest Iran, according to the official Iranian media and emergency services.
The explosion sent a huge plume of thick gray smoke from the Shahid Rajaee part of the port complex.
The Iranian Emergency Services Head said four people died in the explosion. A spokesperson for emergency services said 516 had been injured earlier.
A video distributed by the news agency Mehr has shown surveillance images of the explosion moment, which seems to have taken place in a port warehouse. Other images have shown that helicopters drop water on the fiery fire site by the explosion.
The debris were spread over a large area and many buildings of the port complex have been seriously damaged, according to the state media. Windows within a radius of several kilometers have been broken, they said.
Some reports indicate that people had been trapped in the wreckage of a building reduced in rubble.
Region governor Mohammad Ashouri Taziani said that injured people were transferred to Bandar Abbas medical centers and that the fire had been contained. The port has been closed and maritime operations suspended, according to the state media.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered an investigation into the causes of the incident. He wrote on X that the Minister of the Interior had been sent to the region to “examine the dimensions of the accident”.
The IIRIB state broadcaster said that the explosion had taken place in the port and sulfur of the port.
A government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said that it would take a while to establish the cause of the explosion – “But so far, what has been determined is that the containers have been stored in a corner of the port which probably contained chemicals that exploded. But until the fire is extinguished, it is difficult to check the cause. ”
Shahid Rajaee is a large installation for container shipments, covering 2,400 hectares (around 5,900 acres). It manages 70 million tonnes of freight per year, including oil and general shipping. It has nearly 500,000 square meters (5.4 million square feet) of warehouses and 35 shipping places.
