By. Scott Jackson
April 26th, 2025
Five were killed and a staggering 700 injured in an explosion at the port in Bandar Abbas in southwest Iran. Video was taken of the fire directly before the explosion that destroyed part of the Shahid Rajaee port. The government has said the explosion is linked to chemicals that were being stored at a facility there. The cause of the fire is unknown but the fire quickly grew and ignited something which caused the blast.
Locals report the blast destroying buildings in the immediate area and blew out windows and roofs further away. Others report feeling the blast up to 30 miles away.
A video of the aftermath shows how powerful this blast was and puts you into the shoes of the people who crawled from the wreckage directly after. Windows would have been turned into claymores spraying glass fragments at the speed of sound, wood and bricks and metals would have been turned into supersonic projectiles.
We also have another video shot from a news helicopter afterwords that gives us a better view of the location which is actually at a cargo holding area about a mile from the actual port.
From this footage the geolocation of the site is fairly standard and only took a couple minutes. The exact site of the fire that caused the blast is 27.125056°N 56.066710°E, which I’ve included a picture of . The area seems to be a long term storage area for cargo that won’t be moving for a while.
A spokesperson for the Iranian government said that an investigation into the cause of the blast would take some time to complete but that it seemed that the cause was not malicious.
“but so far what has been determined is that containers were stored in a corner of the port that likely contained chemicals which exploded. But until the fire is extinguished, it’s hard to ascertain the cause.”
Fatemeh Mohajerani, an Iranian goverment spokeswomen.
So far, some of the area affected remains on fire. The Iranian state has announced a state of emergency in the Hormozgan province, as chemicals in the air could be harmful to those living in the area.
Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, said the country’s interior minister was heading to the region to oversee the situation. He also expressed “deep sorrow and sympathy” for the disaster.
The port at Bandar Abbas is located on the Strait of Hormuz, a busy and strategic location that sees a good percentage of the worlds oil and natural gas shipments.
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-Scott
Global Conflict Reporting 
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