Iran women’s soccer player quits national team over protest killings

The building damaged in a blast in Bandar Abbas on Saturday was not connected to a gas network, said a resident contradicting reports by some Iranian media that attributed the incident to a gas explosion.

In a video shared after the blast, the resident said the building had never been fitted with gas piping. State media later said that the cause of the incident was under investigation.

The head of crisis management at the Hormozgan Governorate said the blast left 14 people injured and one person dead.

Some reports said the blast killed the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, Alireza Tangsiri, which the IRGC’s public relations office denied.

Local media quoted residents in Parand, near Tehran, as saying thick smoke has covered the sky over the city, with one resident saying the haze has persisted for about two hours.

Officials cited by local outlets denied any security incident in the region and attributed the smoke to a fire in nearby scrubland.

Security forces arrested 16-year-old protester, Mohammad Amin Aghili, alive and later executed him while his family was attempting to secure temporary release on bail, eyewitnesses told Iran International.

The authorities detained the protester and later demanded bail when the family approached judicial officials to follow up on his release. After the family failed to provide the amount, they were eventually handed the body of their son.

According to the account, officials told the family the detainee had died by “suicide,” despite a gunshot wound to the head visible on his body. When relatives objected, authorities were quoted as responding: “That’s how it is.”

The public relations office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps denied that its navy commander Alireza Tangsiri had been assassinated.

“The claim originated from an account known as Terror Alarm, which has previously circulated false information on security and military matters,” the IRGC said in a statement issued after a powerful blast struck a residential building in the southern city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday.

A second blast in southern Iran hit a four-unit residential building in Ahvaz on Saturday, killing four people, local media reported.

Babak Rabiei, head of the Ahvaz Fire and Safety Services, told ISNA the incident occurred in the Kianshahr neighborhood and killed four members of one family — a father, mother and their two children.

Rabiei said two people, a three-year-old child and a woman, were pulled alive from under the rubble.