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Bus Carrying Pilgrims from Pakistan to Iraq Crashes in Iran, At Least 28 Dead

Iranians drive past Iranian and Palestinian national flags hanging on buildings at Enghelab Square in Tehran, Iran, 19 August 2024. EPA/ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH
Iranians drive past Iranian and Palestinian national flags hanging on buildings at Enghelab Square in Tehran, Iran, 19 August 2024. EPA/ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH
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Bus Carrying Pilgrims from Pakistan to Iraq Crashes in Iran, At Least 28 Dead

Iranians drive past Iranian and Palestinian national flags hanging on buildings at Enghelab Square in Tehran, Iran, 19 August 2024. EPA/ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH
Iranians drive past Iranian and Palestinian national flags hanging on buildings at Enghelab Square in Tehran, Iran, 19 August 2024. EPA/ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH

A bus carrying Shiite pilgrims from Pakistan to Iraq crashed in central Iran, killing at least 28 people, an official said Wednesday.
The crash happened Tuesday night in the central Iranian province of Yazd, said Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local emergency official, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Another 23 people suffered injuries in the crash, 14 of them serious, he added. He said all the bus passengers hailed from Pakistan.
There were 51 people on board at the time of the crash outside of the city of Taft, some 500 kilometers southeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Iranian state television later blamed the crash on the bus brakes failing and a lack of attention by its driver.
A separate bus crash early Wednesday in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province killed six people and injured 18, authorities said.

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Iran's President Visits Those Injured in Port Explosion that Killed at Least 28 People

A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)
A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)
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Iran's President Visits Those Injured in Port Explosion that Killed at Least 28 People

A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)
A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)

Iran's president visited those injured Sunday in a huge explosion that rocked one of the Islamic Republic's main ports, a facility purportedly linked to an earlier delivery of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant.

The visit by President Masoud Pezeshkian came as the toll from Saturday's blast at the Shahid Rajaei port outside of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran's Hormozgan province rose to 28 killed and about 1,000 others injured.

Iranian state television described the fire as being under control, saying emergency workers hoped that it would be fully extinguished later Sunday. Overnight, helicopters and heavy cargo aircraft flew repeated sorties over the burning port, dumping seawater on the site, The AP news reported.

Pir Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran’s Red Crescent society offered the death toll and number of injured in a statement carried by an Iranian government website, saying that only 190 of the injured remained hospitalized on Sunday. The provincial governor declared three days of mourning.

Private security firm Ambrey says the port received missile fuel chemical in March. It was part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran, first reported in January by the Financial Times. The chemical used to make solid propellant for rockets 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 AP put one of the vessels believed to be carrying the chemical in the vicinity in March, as Ambrey said.

“The fire was reportedly the result of improper handling of a shipment of solid fuel intended for use in Iranian ballistic missiles,” Ambrey said.

In a first reaction on Sunday, Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Reza Talaeinik denied that missile fuel had been imported through the port.

“No sort of imported and exporting consignment for fuel or military application was (or) is in the site of the port,” he told state television by telephone. He called foreign reports on the missile fuel baseless — but offered no explanation for what material detonated with such incredible force at the site. Talaeinik promised authorities would offer more information later.

It’s unclear why Iran wouldn’t have moved the chemicals from the port, particularly after the Beirut port blast in 2020. That explosion, caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,000 others. However, Israel did target Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses industrial mixers to create solid fuel — meaning potentially that it had no place to process the chemical.

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, like in the Beirut explosion.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin deployed several emergency aircraft to Bandar Abbas to provide assistance, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported.