At least 16 people were killed and 13 injured in an explosion at the HABAS Iron and Steel Plant in Aliaga, in the western Turkish province of Izmir, on Monday. The blast happened at around 11:46 am local time, during furnace replacement work, when a ceiling crane collapsed and materials fell into an electric arc furnace.
The blast at the HABAS plant
The explosion struck the HABAS factory in Aliaga, about 60 kilometres north of Izmir, which sits on the Aegean Sea in western Turkiye. Izmir Governor Suleyman Elban said the explosion occurred at around 11:46 am local time during furnace replacement work. An overhead crane collapsed, causing materials to fall into an electric arc furnace and triggering an explosion after damaging a natural gas line. The blast sparked a fire at the facility, and footage posted online showed a huge cloud of thick smoke pouring into the sky as flames engulfed a tall structure inside the plant. Firefighters, medical teams and search and rescue personnel were deployed to the site.
The casualty figures changed through the day as rescue teams searched the wreckage. The governor's office initially reported six dead and around a dozen injured, with 10 people trapped under the rubble. Elban later updated the toll to 10 dead and 15 injured, with four workers in serious condition. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking after a Cabinet meeting at the Presidential Complex in Ankara on Monday, said at least 16 people had been killed and 13 injured, including two seriously. Izmir Mayor Cemil Tugay said the full number of dead and injured would only become clear once the rubble had been cleared. Hindustan Times later reported the toll at 17, as rescue work continued into the night.
Workers were doing maintenance
The plant was in a maintenance period when the blast happened, with about 200 people on site instead of the usual 300 or more. HABAS said the accident happened during planned maintenance on one of its furnaces. The governor said the plant was carrying out furnace replacement work, and the crane that collapsed was part of that operation. Workers who were trapped under the rubble were searched for through the day, and rescue teams continued working into the evening. The explosion felt like an earthquake, according to eyewitness Deniz Ulker, who told Al Jazeera that thick black smoke was coming out of the factory and a fire had broken out where the chimney was.
President Erdogan said judicial and administrative investigations had been launched to determine the cause of the explosion in Izmir's Aliaga district and identify those responsible. Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said the Menemen chief prosecutor's office had opened an investigation and assigned four prosecutors to examine the site with a panel of experts. The investigations will look at how the crane collapsed, whether maintenance procedures were followed, and who bears responsibility for the deaths. The plant is in Aliaga's Bozkoy neighbourhood, and HABAS is a privately owned group and one of Turkiye's top steel producers. The plant was established in 1987 and produces about 4.5 million tons of steel a year.
Workers' groups raise safety questions
Workers' groups say there is a long record of safety issues at the factory. The Izmir chapter of Turkiye's Labour Party said it was "the third fatal incident" at the factory in three weeks. Writing on X, it warned that seven employees had died in accidents at the plant in the past 10 years and said maintenance requirements and safety standards were not being met. The claim puts the focus on the plant's safety record, not just on the crane failure itself. The investigations now under way will have to answer whether the accident was a one-off equipment failure or part of a wider pattern of neglected safety at the site.
The European Union and Azerbaijan were among those to send condolences after the blast. Rescue efforts continued through the day to find more people trapped under the rubble, with no update at first on how many were still missing. The governor's office and the plant's management worked with emergency teams at the site, while hospitals in Izmir treated the injured. Two of the wounded were reported to be in serious condition. The blast is one of the deadliest industrial accidents in Turkiye in recent years, and it comes at a plant that is central to the country's steel industry.
What the investigation must answer
The central question is why an overhead crane collapsed into a live furnace during maintenance. Investigators will examine the crane, the furnace replacement work, the gas line that was damaged, and the safety procedures in place on the day. They will also have to weigh the Labour Party's claim about earlier fatal incidents at the plant. Until the rubble is cleared and the expert panel reports, the final death toll and the full cause will remain uncertain, but the scale of the loss is already clear.
