They will blame the ‘negligence’ by Port Blast as the death toll increases to 70

Iran’s Interior Minister said negligence was a factor in the mass explosion and fire in the largest container port in the country, since the dead number rose to at least 70.

Eskandar Momeni said that Saturday’s explosion in the port of Shahid Rajae in Bandar Abbas, which also injured more than 1,000 people, was caused by “deficiencies, which include breach with security and negligence precautions.”

“Some people considered responsible” had been summoned to question, he added.

The customs authorities have said that the imported load caught and exploded. The Ministry of Defense has denied foreign reports that it was a sending of a missile fuel chemist.

The director of crisis management of the province of Hormozgan, Mehrad Hassanzadeh, also said on Monday that the fire fighting effort was “almost in its final stages.”

Meanwhile, the governor of Hormozgan, Mohammad Ashouri Taziani, said that the cleaning operations in the port could continue for several more days, and that it could take a weeks before the situation went to normal.

He estimated that 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres), almost two thirds of the site, were seriously affected by the explosion.

The customs administration said that the burden that caught fire and exploded had not been registered or declared formally before the incident, according to the ISNA news agency.

On Sunday, the CEO of the firm that operated the affected area, Sina Marine and Port Services Development Company, blamed “a repeated and catastrophic error that involves false statements of dangerous goods.”

Iran’s Ministry of Defense denied the reports that the explosion was caused by the inappropriate management of a sodium perclorato sending, a solid fuel used for ballistic missiles.

Spokesman Brig Gen Reza Talai-Nik said Sunday that “there was no import or export of fuel or cargo shipments for military use in the vicinity of the incident”, and accused foreign media of spreading “false news.”

Ambrey Intelligence, a maritime risk consultant, told Associated Press that the port received a Sodium Percelore sending last month, and that the explosion was “the result of inappropriate management.”

The New York Times also cited a person without a name with links with the revolutionary guards of Iran saying that sodium’s perclorato exploded.