A large explosion rocked Shahid Rajaee port in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, with at least 47 people injured after the blast, state media reported.

The blast occurred as Iran began a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman, although the cause of the explosion was not immediately clear, Reuters reported.

“The cause of this incident was the explosion of several containers stored in the Shahid Rajaee Port wharf area. We are currently evacuating and transferring the injured to medical centres,” a local crisis management official told state TV.

Fars news agency reported that 47 people were injured according to initial estimates.

Semi-official Tasnim news agency added that the port’s activities were suspended to extinguish the fire and that considering the large number of port employees “many people were probably injured or even killed in the incident.”

The blast shattered windows within a radius of several kilometres, Iranian media said, with footage shared online showing a mushroom cloud forming following the explosion.

In 2020, computers at the same port were hit by a cyberattack that caused massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility. The Washington Post had reported that Iran’s arch-foe Israel appeared to be behind that incident as retaliation for an earlier Iranian cyberattack.

Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged gunfire for a second straight day on Saturday as ties plummeted between the two nuclear-armed neighbours after an attack on tourists blamed on Pakistani militants killed 26 in India’s Kashmir region.

The Indian Army said its troops responded to “unprovoked” small arms fire from multiple Pakistan Army posts that started around midnight on Friday along the 740-km (460-mile) de facto border separating the Indian and Pakistani areas of Kashmir, Reuters reported.

The Indian Army said Pakistani troops had also opened up with sporadic fire around midnight on Thursday. No casualties were reported from the Indian side, it said.

There was no immediate comment from the Pakistani military.

Kashmir’s police have identified three suspects, including two Pakistani nationals, who carried out the April 22 attack. Pakistan has denied any involvement and its defence minister has said an international investigation was needed into the attack.

After the attack, India and Pakistan unleashed a raft of measures against each other, with Pakistan closing its airspace to Indian airlines, and India suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty that regulates water-sharing from the Indus River and its tributaries.

India and Pakistan have a decades-old ceasefire agreement over the disputed region of Kashmir but their troops still exchange gunfire sporadically. The two nations both claim Kashmir and have fought two of their three wars over it.

Pakistan believes an international investigation is needed into the killing of 26 men at a tourist spot in Indian Kashmir this week and is willing to work with international investigators, the New York Times reported on Friday, quoting Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.

Asif told the newspaper in an interview that Pakistan was “ready to cooperate” with “any investigation which is conducted by international inspectors.”

India has said there were Pakistani elements to the attack on Tuesday, but Islamabad has denied any involvement. The two countries both claim the mountainous region but each controls only part of it.

Since the attack, the nuclear-armed nations have unleashed a raft of measures against each other, with India putting the critical Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance and Pakistan closing its airspace to Indian airlines.

Asif told the newspaper that India had used the aftermath of the militant attack as a pretext to suspend the water treaty and for domestic political purposes.

India, was taking steps to punish Pakistan “without any proof, without any investigation,” he added.

“We do not want this war to flare up, because flaring up of this war can cause disaster for this region,” Asif told the newspaper.

A little-known militant group, Kashmir Resistance, claimed responsibility for the attack in a social media message.

Indian security agencies say Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, is a front for Pakistan-based militant organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.

Asif disputed that allegation in the interview. He said Lashkar-e-Taiba was “defunct” and had no ability to plan or conduct attacks from Pakistan-controlled territory.

“They don’t have any setup in Pakistan,” he said, according to the newspaper.

“Those people, whatever is left of them, they are contained. Some of them are under house arrest, some of them are in custody. They are not at all active,” the official said.

(Reuters)