Fuel tanker blast on the Sanandaj-Hamedan road kills 12; Pezeshkian orders a probe

A fuel tanker that hit other cars and caught fire on the Sanandaj-Hamedan highway in western Iran has killed 12 people and injured seven, state broadcaster IRIB reported on Sunday, raising Saturday's toll of 11. President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered an immediate investigation and told officials to treat the wounded and support the families.

IRNA, the official news agency, said the tanker struck vehicles near a traffic police station outside Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province, about 400 kilometres west of Tehran. Local officials blamed a fault in the braking system. Babak Hodaei, head of emergency medical services at Kurdestan University of Medical Sciences, said several nearby cars burned and that the injured were taken to a hospital in Sanandaj. Rescue work was still under way on Sunday.

Pezeshkian posted condolences on X to the families and to the people of Kurdistan province. First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref telephoned Governor Arash Zerehtan and asked for an expert report to the government, plus insurance cover for the dead, the injured and people who had gone to the scene to help.

The Sanandaj governor, speaking to Reuters on Saturday when the toll still stood at ten dead and six injured, said a technical fault in the tanker's brakes caused the crash and that the fire was brought under control quickly. Names of the dead have not been released.

The same stretch of road has a record. In 2018 a fuel tanker hit an intercity bus near Sanandaj and killed 15 people, with four injured. Nationally, road crashes kill more than 17,000 people in Iran each year. The Associated Press, citing traffic specialists, lists three standing causes: unsafe vehicles, drivers who ignore the rules, and emergency services that arrive late or under-equipped. Heavy freight on mountain routes in the west adds tanker loads of petrol and diesel to that mix.

The crash sits inside a harder week for Iranian roads and waters. US Central Command said on Saturday that American forces destroyed three Iranian crude carriers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired ballistic missiles at a US carrier and a destroyer. Iran said it then struck tankers and US-linked vessels around the Strait of Hormuz. None of that naval fighting caused the Sanandaj fire. It does mean the country's fuel system is under strain at both ends: tankers at sea and tankers on the Hamedan road.

Kurdistan province is a transit corridor between the western border and the central plateau. The police post named in the IRNA report is there because the highway is a known accident site, not because this particular tanker was under escort. A brake failure on a loaded fuel truck at that point turns a traffic stop into a fireball. That is the mechanical fact Pezeshkian's inquiry is being asked to confirm or reject.

What the presidency can actually change is slower: tanker inspection standards, the age of the fleet, and whether a police station next to a fuel route has the gear to keep a burning load from reaching other cars. Aref's instruction on insurance for bystanders is a tell. People ran toward the fire. Some of them may now be on the injured list. The government wants those claims paid while the technical file is still open.

Until Hodaei or the governor publish a final list, the number to use is 12 dead and seven injured, with the possibility that the count moves again. The 2018 bus crash on the same approach to Sanandaj is the comparison that local reporting reached for first, and it is the comparison that will sit in the investigation file.