Massive fire breaks out at oil refinery near Iran’s Tehran

A massive fire broke out at an oil refinery near the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday, state media reported.

The fire broke out at the Shahid Tondgooyan refinery in Shahr-e-Rey, south of the capital Tehran, Iran’s state broadcaster (IRIB) said on Telegram.

Mansour Darajati, director-general of Tehran’s crisis management team, said the incident was due to a leak in one of the pipelines inside the refinery.

“Fortunately, we have not had any casualties so far,” the Young Journalists Club (YJC), an IRIB-affiliated news agency, quoted Darajati as saying.

The head of public relations at the refinery ruled out the possibility of sabotage, IRIB reported.

“So far, no information is available on the extent of possible losses and damages,” IRIB quoted him as saying.

Around 18 storage tanks at the refinery have so far caught fire, YJC reported.

Several ambulances have been dispatched to the scene, IRIB cited Mojtaba Khaledi, spokesman for Iran’s emergency services, as saying.

Hours earlier, the largest ship in the Iranian navy caught fire and later sank in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances, state media reported.

In 2020, Iran witnessed a series of mysterious fires and explosions across the country, some of them at sensitive military and nuclear sites.