Iran declares holiday in Bandar Abbas port as fire still raging
Parts of Iran’s largest container port are still ablaze more than 10 hours after chemicals stored in the port caught fire, leading to a massive explosion that killed several people and injured hundreds more.
Footage released by Iran’s Mehr news agency late on Saturday showed that fire was still raging at Shahid Rajaee port, located just near the port city of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf coast in southern Iran.
A reporter on the scene of the fire quoted authorities as saying that they might be able to contain the fire overnight.
The fire started at noon local time in an area of the port where chemicals had reportedly been stored. It led to a large explosion that was felt in nearby cities and led to the complete closure of the customs and goods processing facilities in the area.
The official IRNA news agency said that eight people had been killed and some 750 had been injured as a result of the fire and the explosion that followed, adding that six more were unaccounted for.
The governor of Hormozgan province, where the port is located, declared Sunday a holiday in the metropolitan city of Bandar Abbas in an attempt to control the situation and to prevent any harm to citizens as a result of the pollution caused by the fire.
IRNA said President Masoud Pezeshkian was closely monitoring the situation while his ministers of interior and transportation and their deputies were in Bandar Abbas to supervise rescue efforts.
World leaders offered condolences and sympathies to Pezeshkian over the incident.
The Shahid Rajaee port is responsible for more than 70 million metric tons per year of cargo processing in Iran, including more than 3 million twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers, making it one of the largest container ports in the region.
Authorities said they had stopped cargo processing at all 23 docks of the port despite the fact that the Saturday explosion had only affected one dock and its related facilities.
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