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Accident at Iran's sensitive military Parchin site kills one engineer
Fars news said investigations into the cause of the accident were under way.
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This file handout satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies on January 28, 2020, shows an overview of Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, south of the capital Tehran. Iran announced Saturday it has started up advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium more quickly in a new breach of its undertakings under a troubled 2015 nuclear agreement.Satellite image ©2021 Maxar Technologies / AFP (AFP/Maxar Technologies )
A
n engineer died and another employee was injured after an accident on Wednesday in a research centre at the Parchin military site affiliated with Iran's Defence Ministry, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Thursday.
Fars news said investigations into the cause of the accident were under way.
Situated 60km (37 miles) southeast of Tehran, Parchin is a sensitive military site housing several industrial and research units, where Western security services believe Iran carried out tests related to nuclear bomb detonations more than a decade ago.
In 2015, Tehran allowed the UN nuclear watchdog to take environmental samples at the military site to make an assessment of "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.
In June 2020, an explosion caused by a tank leak occurred in the same area at a gas storage facility.
Meanwhile, Israel has told the United States it was responsible for the killing of an Iranian Revolutionary Guards colonel last week, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Colonel Sayyad Khodai was shot dead on Sunday by a gunman on the back of a motorcycle as he sat in a car outside his home in Tehran.
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi has vowed to avenge the killing, and the Revolutionary Guards blamed it on "elements of global arrogance" -- a reference to the United States and its allies, including Israel.
On Wednesday, the Times reported that "according to an intelligence official briefed on the communications, Israel has informed American officials that it was behind the killing."
The source, who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, said Israel told US officials the killing was meant as a warning to Iran to halt the operations of a covert group within the Quds Force -- the foreign operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's ideological army.
Iran's state broadcaster has described Khodai as a member of the Quds Force.
It had previously reported that the colonel was "known" in Syria, where Iran has backed the government during an 11-year civil war and where it acknowledges deploying "military advisers".
Thousands attended Khodai's funeral on Tuesday in central Tehran.
Funeral prayers were led by the capital's top imam, and Khodai's coffin was draped in the Iranian flag. Posters hailed him as a "martyr".
Khodai's killing came with negotiations between Iran and world powers to restore a frayed 2015 nuclear deal stalled since March.
One of the main sticking points is Tehran's demand to remove the Guards from a US terrorism list -- a request rejected by Washington.
