An image grab from footage obtained from Iranian State TV IRIB on June 26, 2020, shows an orange light, resulting from what the country's defence ministry said, the explosion of a gas tank in the Iranian capital Tehran./ AFP / IRIB TV /
A blast in a busy neighborhood of Iran’s capital killed over a dozen people, state media reported, marking the second large explosion in Tehran province in less than a week.
Thirteen died in the blast Tuesday evening at a clinic in the north of the capital, Tehran’s attorney general, Ali Qasi Mehr, told state TV.
The explosion was caused by a gas leak in tanks on the building’s lower basement floor, according to the spokesman for Tehran’s Fire Department, Jalal Maleki.
The semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency published mobile phone video of a large plume of smoke rising from buildings in the Tajrish area of northern Tehran -- a normally busy and heavily trafficked intersection of the city.
Firefighters were dispatched to the area to put out the ensuing blaze, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, citing Maleki.
The incident follows an explosion last week near a military site on the outskirts of Tehran that officials blamed on a gas tank.
