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Türkiye Steel Blast Kills 18, Plant Chief DetainedWorld
The death toll from the blast at the HABAŞ steel plant in İzmir rose to 18 on Tuesday, as prosecutors detained the company’s chairman and 10 others.
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An explosion and fire tore through a steel plant in western Türkiye on Monday, killing 18 workers and injuring 12 others, in one of the country’s deadliest industrial accidents in recent years. The blast struck the HABAŞ Demir Çelik iron and steel plant in Aliağa, a heavily industrial district about 60 kilometres north of the port city of İzmir.
According to the İzmir governor’s office, the explosion happened at around midday local time, when an overhead crane collapsed and fell into an electric arc furnace during the casting of liquid steel. The impact damaged a natural gas line and set off a powerful blast, followed by a fire that engulfed part of the plant. Footage posted online showed a huge cloud of thick smoke rising over the site, and witnesses said the explosion shook the ground so violently that some thought an earthquake had struck.
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The death toll climbed through Monday and Tuesday as rescue teams searched the wreckage. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said after a cabinet meeting on Monday that 16 people had been killed and 13 injured. The health minister later said one of the critically injured workers had died in hospital, taking the toll to 17. On Tuesday, search teams recovered the body of another worker who had been missing since the blast, raising the toll to 18. The missing worker was identified in Turkish media reports as Güner Gökçe. Officials said 12 people were injured, one of them critically, and that the victims had died from severe burns.
Prosecutors in the nearby town of Menemen opened a judicial investigation within hours of the blast and assigned four prosecutors to the case. Detention warrants were issued for 11 people, including the plant’s board chairman, Mehmet Rüştü Başaran, along with senior managers and technical staff. Mr Başaran was detained in Istanbul’s Kartal district on Tuesday and was expected to be taken to İzmir for questioning. A local court imposed a temporary ban on reporting about the incident while the investigation continues.
The disaster has set off protests and a wider debate about workplace safety in Türkiye. Workers and residents gathered in Aliağa on Tuesday evening to demand answers, while labour groups pointed to figures showing that at least 1,736 workers died in work-related incidents across the country in the first nine months of 2026. The HABAŞ plant itself had seen two other fatal incidents in recent weeks: a 55-year-old worker died on 21 October after falling about eight metres, and a 20-year-old worker was killed on 5 November when a heavy vehicle tyre exploded as it was being inflated.
The labour minister said earlier inspections had found no serious safety problems at the plant and that inspectors would now examine whether negligence played a part. HABAŞ said the explosion happened during scheduled maintenance on one of its electric arc furnaces and that its safety management system was regularly inspected. The company is one of Türkiye’s largest steel producers, and its Aliağa plant produces about 4.5 million tonnes of steel a year.
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