Explosion at Turkish steel plant kills 10, eight more trapped under rubble

At least 10 people have been killed in a massive explosion at a steel plant in western Turkiye, and 15 more have been injured. Rescue workers are working to free people trapped under the rubble of the plant. Government officials in the country confirmed the information.

Suleyman Elban, governor of the port city of Izmir, said the explosion happened at midday local time at the Habas steel plant in the Aliaga area, about 60 kilometres north of Izmir. At least eight workers were trapped inside the plant at the time.

Video footage from the scene showed flames and a huge plume of thick black smoke rising into the sky from inside a tall structure at the plant.

According to Governor Suleyman Elban, an overhead crane collapsed onto a large industrial furnace used for pouring molten steel, causing the explosion.

Speaking to reporters at the scene, he said the overhead crane fell onto the furnace while boiler replacement work was under way at the Habas iron and steel plant, and the explosion followed inside the steel plant.

He said 10 workers lost their lives in the explosion, and eight more were trapped under fallen material. The 15 injured workers are being treated in hospital, four of them in critical condition.

Witness Deniz Ulkar, describing the scale of the accident, said it felt like an earthquake to him.

He told the Anadolu Agency that when he looked towards the plant beside the road, he saw thick black smoke coming out of it and fire burning where the chimney stood.

Turan Ilba, a truck driver at the plant, also told the Anadolu Agency that it felt as if a bomb had exploded.

Cemil Tugay, the mayor of Izmir, said on the social media platform X that rescue workers were removing the collapsed platform. Everyone affected by the accident was a worker at the plant, and a clearer picture of the casualties would emerge once the rubble was cleared.

Meanwhile, workers' organisations have long accused Habas, one of Turkiye's largest private steel producers, of safety lapses at the workplace.

Habas declined to comment when contacted by AFP. According to the Evrensel daily, at least 11 workers died while working at the plant in the decade before Monday's explosion.

The Marxist Workers' Party of Turkiye said on X that this was the third fatal incident at the Habas plant in the past three weeks. Earlier, on October 21, a worker died after falling about eight metres from a staircase, and in another incident a worker was killed when a construction machine tyre exploded while it was being inflated.

A spokesperson for the leftist Aegean Workers' Collective said two of its representatives were arrested outside the hospital where the injured were taken, while they were trying to speak about workplace safety.

The organisation alleges that the hostile working conditions that have persisted at the plant for years are a major cause of the workers' deaths. Of the 11 workers killed over the past 10 years, five were contract workers and two were trainees.

The organisation further alleged that although workers have died year after year, no strict punitive or precautionary action has yet been taken against Habas.