An explosion destroyed a building in Bandar Abbas, a port city in southern Iran, on Saturday, state media reported.
The cause of the explosion that killed the girl was not immediately clear. Iran’s state-run Fars news agency has denied rumors that have been circulating for several hours that Brigadier General Alireza Tansiri, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) navy, has been assassinated.
The explosion comes amid rising tensions in the region after US President Donald Trump recently warned of possible military action against Iran.
A U.S. official told CNN the explosion was not related to any U.S. military action, and an Israeli official said Israel was not involved.
Footage posted by Fars on Saturday showed the explosion tearing through the bottom four floors of a nine-story building in Bandar Abbas.
The agency announced that a 4-year-old girl was killed and 14 others were injured in the explosion. It added that emergency services were called to the scene.
The city’s fire chief told semi-official news agency Tasnim that all residents of the building had been evacuated and emergency services were continuing to investigate the cause of the incident.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
