Many Injured and Killed in Huge Explosion in Iran’s Bandar Abbas Port

A huge explosion rocked the commercial port of Bandar Abbas in Iran at 12:00 on the morning of April 26. According to Iranian media reports it killed at least 14 people and six others are listed as missing. The number of people injured is varying widely in the reports with the Minister of Interior of the Pezizkian government saying at least 300 people are in the hospitals and another 200 were treated and released. Some reports suggested as many as 750 people were injured.

Office buildings in the port have been damaged and glass blown out of windows. The immediate neighborhood around the port is a commercial rather than a residential area which helped to reduce the number of people in the immediate vacinity.

The explosion is believed to have started in a container stored in the hazardous and flammable section of the container park. An extensive container storage park lies immediately to the north of the port’s container loading quays. The Shahid Rajaei commercial port handles about 85 percent of Iran’s non-oil and gas exports and imports, and is connected to Iran’s transnational rail network.

The Iranian authorities have for some years been planning an expansion of the port to increase throughput. The commercial port lies 10 miles to the west of the Bandar Abbas Naval Harbor, which is the homeport to most of Iran’s regular Navy.

In February and March, The Maritime Executive tracked the progress from China of two sanctioned ships owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), MV Golbon and MV Jairan, which then unloaded their cargoes of sodium perchlorate at Bandar Abbas. Sodium perchlorate is processed and fashioned into ammonium perchlorate rocket fuel at the Iranian facilities at Parchin south of Tehran and Khojir. Ammonium perchlorate makes up 70 percent of the standard fuel load of most of Iran’s solid-fueled ballistic missiles, such as medium range Khybar-Shikan and Fattah missiles, and the shorter range Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar missiles.

It is not known if containers unloaded from the two ships were, several weeks after unloading, still in the Sina container port at the time of the explosion, or whether the containers formed the seat of the explosion. As would be expected, an Israeli spokesman denied any knowledge of the explosion, although the Times of Israel was the first media organization to point out a possible connection.

Unusually, heat from the explosion is not yet showing in NASA fire-detecting imagery showing the Shahid Rajaei port; heat spots shown are of oil refineries and the Hormozgan steel works (FIRMS).