Izmir Governor Süleyman Elban said 15 people were injured, including two critically. Those injured were taken to hospital, while authorities said the number of dead and injured would become clearer after the debris is cleared.
Officials also offered an early account of what happened, while stopping short of a final conclusion. A statement from the governor’s office said the blast happened around noon when an overhead crane toppled into a furnace during the casting of liquid steel. Authorities are investigating the incident.
Elban said the plant was in the middle of a shift change rather than active production, with about 200 workers present instead of the expected 300. That detail does not explain the blast, but it does frame the scene inside the factory at the moment everything went wrong.
Mayor Cemil Tugay said the initial fire had been extinguished. Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said four public prosecutors had been assigned to the case.
Witnesses described a blast with the force people usually reach for when ordinary industrial language stops being enough. Nuri Ali Ulker called it “very intense,” adding that “the ground shook,” according to the state-run Anadolu news agency. Another witness, Deniz Ulker, said the explosion “felt like the earth’s crust was shifting beneath us. I thought it was an earthquake.”
The political reaction came quickly. Turkey’s leftist opposition party TIP said the blast showed occupational health and safety were being disregarded in the country. Union leader Başaran Aksu called the incident a “massacre” and demanded the labor minister’s resignation. Those are accusations, not findings from the official inquiry.
According to the independent NGO Health and Safety Labor Watch, 226 workplace deaths were reported across Turkey in September.
HABAS says on its website that the plant was established in 1987 and can produce 4.5 million tons of steel annually.
Alex de Valletta 
Dua Mifsud 