Mehrdad Hasanzadeh, a provincial disaster management official, gave the updated casualty figure in an interview on state television. The previous toll was four dead and more than 500 others injured.
The blast at the Shahid Rajaei port happened as Iran and the United States met Saturday in Omanfor the third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.
While no one in Iran outright suggested that the explosion came from an attack, even Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led the talks, on Wednesday acknowledged that “our security services are on high alert given past instances of attempted sabotage and assassination operations designed to provoke a legitimate response.”
For hours, authorities in Iran offered no clear explanation for what caused the blast at the port, which is just outside of Bandar Abbas, though they did deny that the explosion had anything to do with the country’s oil industry.
However, the port took in a shipment of “sodium perchlorate rocket fuel” in March, the private security firm Ambrey said. The fuel is part of a shipment from China by two vessels to Iran first reported in January by the Financial Times. The fuel 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.
Ship-tracking data analyzed 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 immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
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.
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