An explosion in an apartment building in Iran’s port city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday killed a 4-year-old girl and injured at least 14 others, including a security force member, as seen in local media footage.
The blast happened a day before a planned naval drill by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes. The US military has warned Iran not to threaten its warships or commercial traffic in the strait, on which Bandar Abbas sits.
Even while state television quoted a local fire official as blaming the blast on a gas leak, speculation was rife regarding the reason for the blast.
A local newspaper, named Sobh-e Sahel, aired footage of its correspondent reporting the news, in the backdrop of which a man in a green security force uniform could be seen being carried out on a stretcher. He wore a neck brace and appeared to be in pain, his left hand covering the branch insignia on his uniform. The newspaper did not acknowledge the security force member being carried out elsewhere in its reporting.
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Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard did not discuss the blast either, other than to deny that a Guard navy commander had been hurt.
Curiously, another explosion, blamed on a gas explosion Saturday in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, killed five people, state media reported.
Iran’s heightened tensions with the US have kept the Middle East and the world at large on edge. US President Donald Trump has been threatening to strike the country over the killing of peaceful protesters in the recent mass protests that erupted there, or the possible mass execution of those detained. Lately, he has been accusing Tehran of restarting its nuclear ballistic programme.
Ali Larijani, a top security official in Iran, wrote on X late Saturday that “structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing.” However, there is no public sign of any talks with the United States, which Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly ruled out.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi also called for de-escalation on Saturday and said Egypt is working to bring the US and Iran to the negotiating table to achieve a “peaceful and comprehensive settlement to the Iranian nuclear file,” according to a statement on his phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Qatar in a statement said Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited Tehran on Saturday and met with Larijani about “efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region”.
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