Türkiye: Authorities investigate causes of explosion at cereal warehouse
In Türkiye, authorities are analyzing whether Monday's explosion at a grain warehouse was caused by sabotage. Our correspondent Yunus Soner provides details. teleSUR
Transcript
00:00 silo blast in Turkey. Derince Port has injured at least 12 people on Monday. Police said they
00:06 had launched an investigation into the incident to determine the cause of the explosion.
00:10 Our correspondent Yunus Zoner with the details.
00:13 Hello, we are here in Kocaeli at the port of Derince and right behind me over there are the
00:22 white grain silos where an explosion occurred on Monday afternoon local time. 12 workers were
00:31 injured, two of them heavily, one of them unfortunately lost his life yesterday night.
00:38 The explosion, according to Turkish media, occurred when the ship that you can see also
00:44 in the background, the blue one, was unloading its cargo which is grain. The ship interestingly
00:53 came from the Russian port of Novorossiysk. It arrived here on end of July, its name is Lotus G
01:03 and it transported Russian grain to this port to be processed here. We need to remember that the
01:13 port of Novorossiysk in Russia, which is close to Crimea, has been under attack of Ukrainian
01:19 naval drones over the weekend and previously. Also, worth to remind that on last Friday,
01:26 President Erdogan has declared that Turkey is willing to continue the cooperation with Russia
01:34 in terms of grain. President Erdogan declared that Russia will send the grain to Turkey,
01:40 which will be processed here and then transported from here to especially poor African countries in
01:46 need of that without paving. So that statement of Mr. Erdogan was also a blow to Western attempts
01:55 to keep on excluding Russia from the international grain markets and then occurred this explosion
02:02 right there as I mentioned. The authorities are still investigating why it happened. There is
02:08 the first explanation that it has been because of a pressure of gas that develops when this grain is
02:15 maintained here or stored here. But the general director of the agricultural goods office,
02:24 the state agency responsible for these silos has declared, has stated that such an explosion had
02:30 not occurred before any time to his knowledge. And Turkey is a grain country, so there's hundreds of
02:38 these silos all over the country. So the authorities are still investigating why this
02:43 explosion has occurred. They do not exclude any possibility, including a possible sabotage.
02:50 We will hear about that in the next days. Yunus Soner, Telesur, Kocaeli, Turkey.