TEHRAN: An explosion killed two people on Tues­day at a factory south of Iran’s capital, state media reported, blaming human error for the latest in a string of blasts in the Islamic republic.

The official IRNA news agency said that three more people were injured in the pre-dawn explosion, days after an accident caused major damage at a nuclear complex.

Tuesday’s blast in an industrial zone in Baqer­shahr, 23 kilometres (14 miles) from Tehran, was caused by “workers being negligent whilst filling oxygen tanks”, it quoted the town’s governor as saying.

“The explosion ... was so powerful that the walls of the Saipapress factory near­­by were also totally des­troyed,” Amin Babai said, without giving details on the function of the factory.

The incident took place inside the Oxijen factory at 3:03am, an emergency services spokesperson said, adding that two of those wounded had been admitted to hospital.

Babai said that “firefighters had been on the scene” since shortly after the explosion and “prevented further fires and explosions”.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation on Tuesday denied “false allegations by counter-revolutionary elements in the media of an explosion” at another nuclear plant in Ardakan around 450 kilometres southeast of Tehran.

“Nothing happened” at the yellow-cake production plant, it said in a statement. The rumours are aimed at creating “despair” and supporting the campaign of “maximum pressure of the Great Satan (US)” against Iran, the atomic energy agency said.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2020