ANKARA, Nov 9: An explosion and fire hit the HABAŞ iron and steel plant in the Aliağa district of İzmir province in western Turkey on Monday, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said 16 people were killed.
The blast happened around noon local time, which is 0900 Greenwich Mean Time, at the plant about 60 kilometres north of İzmir city. The İzmir governor’s office said its first findings showed that an overhead crane snapped and fell into an electric arc furnace during the casting of liquid steel.
The number of dead rose through the day as officials gave new updates. The governor’s office first said 3 people had died, 14 were injured and 10 were missing. It later raised the death toll to 6. The Associated Press later reported 10 dead, 15 injured and 4 missing, citing Governor Süleyman Elban in a televised update at about 4:45 in the afternoon local time.
President Erdoğan gave the latest figure after a cabinet meeting on Monday afternoon and said 16 people were killed. Reports put the number of injured at 14 to 15. Sky News reported 14 injured, with three in a serious condition. Officials said the toll may still change while rescuers clear debris at the site.
İzmir Mayor Cemil Tugay said the exact number of casualties would only be known once the debris is cleared. Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi said emergency services, firefighters and search and rescue teams responded to the blast and worked at the plant.
Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said the Menemen chief prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the explosion. He said four prosecutors have been assigned and experts are examining the site. Labour Minister Vedat Işıkhan said a chief inspector has been appointed to look into the accident.
HABAŞ gave a different account of what was happening at the time. The company said the accident happened during planned maintenance on an electric arc furnace, and it said the causes are being examined together with the authorities.
The plant was established in 1987 and produces about 4.5 million tons of steel a year, making it a major site in the Aliağa industrial area.
The explosion also brought fresh attention to safety at the plant and in workplaces across Turkey. The Evrensel daily reported that at least 11 workers had died at the plant over the past decade. That figure is a reported claim and has not been treated in this report as an established fact. Turkish reporting by the British Broadcasting Corporation Turkish service and by İSİG, the Health and Safety Labour Watch, says two workers died in separate accidents at the plant in the past two to three weeks, including a 20 year old worker on Nov 5. İSİG counts 1,736 workplace deaths in Turkey in the first nine months of 2026.
Sky News noted that the blast came on the same day that the COP31 climate summit opened in Antalya, Turkey. For families of workers at the plant, the wait now is for the debris to be cleared, for the missing to be accounted for, and for the investigations by prosecutors and the labour inspector to explain how the crane fell and why so many people died.
