Blast tears through Izmir steelworks, killing six workers

The blast hit the Habas Demir Celik plant around midday local time and also sparked a fire, the office said. In its first public account, authorities said three people had died, 14 were injured and 10 were trapped under rubble. A later update said one of the injured had died, along with two of those rescued from beneath the debris, bringing the death toll to six.

That changing toll is not a minor bookkeeping detail. It shows the instability of the first official picture after a factory disaster, when rescue work is still under way and the numbers move with it.

Izmir Mayor Cemil Tugay said emergency teams were continuing work to remove a collapsed platform and that those affected were factory workers. Shortly before the toll was updated to six dead, he said on X that the exact number would become clear only after the wreckage had been removed.

What caused the explosion has not been established by officials in the supplied reporting. The DHA news agency said initial findings suggested an overhead crane collapsed into a large industrial furnace used during the liquid steel casting process. At this stage, that is an early reported account, not a finished investigation.

The reporting available so far is specific about the toll, the fire and the rescue effort, and much thinner on the questions that usually matter most afterward: how the blast began, what failed first and what investigators will conclude once the rubble is cleared.