Archived material Access restricted Article
Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Wed 02/18/2004 View Tue 02/17/2004 View Mon 02/16/2004 View Sun 02/15/2004 View Sat 02/14/2004 View Fri 02/13/2004 View Thu 02/12/2004
1
2004-02-18 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
More than 200 killed, 350 injured in Iran train explosion
Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.
Posted by Fred Pruitt & Dan Darling 2004-02-18 08:50|| || Front Page|| [11132 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Earthquakes, meteors, massive explosions...

Anyone else think the election's gonna be interesting?
Posted by Robert Crawford  2004-2-18 9:14:55 AM|| [http://www.kloognome.com]  2004-2-18 9:14:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 First 40K people dead from earthquakes, now this is possibly by earthquake.

Could the 3rd one be the charm? Like in the movies, the blackhats are in a meeting and the building falls on top of them.

Also, only 50(?) miles from Afghanistan. Car bomb materiel so close, but now farther away.
Posted by Anonymous2U 2004-2-18 9:31:34 AM||   2004-2-18 9:31:34 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Fire crews had rushed to the scene to fight a smaller initial blaze when the wagons blew up in a giant explosion
Sounds just like what happened with the Texas City blast, fire heated up the cargo of ammonium nitrate fertilizer till it reached ignition point.
Posted by Steve  2004-2-18 10:33:31 AM||   2004-2-18 10:33:31 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Iran just isn't having a good year.
Posted by Charles  2004-2-18 10:35:04 AM||   2004-2-18 10:35:04 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Mullahs: Look in the mirror and say "Inshallah." Then go out to your flocks and see if they bite it---hook, line, and sinker.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2004-2-18 11:33:12 AM||   2004-2-18 11:33:12 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Sounds like the Taliban and Hizzbolah will be disappointed.
Posted by Super Hose  2004-2-18 11:47:13 AM||   2004-2-18 11:47:13 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 my sympathy meter hasn't even moved a millimeter
Posted by Jon Shep U.K 2004-2-18 11:57:14 AM||   2004-2-18 11:57:14 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 I remember a three-day unplanned school vacation in the late 1950's, when a trainload of empty oil cars derailed behind our school in Louisiana. The derailment woke everyone up in a two or three mile radius, and the cleanup took a month. This was WITHOUT any fires, without any dangerous chemicals, and without any loss of life.

Cooking fertilizer (ammonium nitrate) and "sulfur compounds" together is not something any really intelligent person wants to see happen. You can get some really nasty chemical combinations from that - some of which are explosive, others are just plain deadly.
Posted by Old Patriot  2004-2-18 12:04:30 PM|| [http://users.codenet.net/mweather/default.htm]  2004-2-18 12:04:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Ruanaway train. Why does this surprise me. Like the Haaj accidents. Allah willed it. Maybe Allah is on our side.
Posted by dataman1 2004-2-18 12:08:33 PM||   2004-2-18 12:08:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Note to Iranian mullahs: We helped out once. And what did we get for it? This means that for this latest "problem" the appropriate response is, "handle it".
Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-2-18 1:15:21 PM||   2004-2-18 1:15:21 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Debka is saying on it's news ticker that 180,000 perished in explosion. Is that a mistake?
Posted by cat 2004-2-18 2:03:48 PM||   2004-2-18 2:03:48 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Debka saying 182 now Cat. Sounds like maybe a hump yard charlie foxtrot.
Posted by Shipman 2004-2-18 2:34:05 PM||   2004-2-18 2:34:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Now they've changed it...must have been wishful thinking on their part...or maybe another portent?
Posted by cat 2004-2-18 3:33:58 PM||   2004-2-18 3:33:58 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Shipman---I would doubt that Iran has evolved to the hump yard stage yet. Probably switching and making up trains and consists are up to the mullahs (who probably have the final say). Sounds like quite the hazmat stew!
Posted by Alaska Paul 2004-2-18 4:37:15 PM||   2004-2-18 4:37:15 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 
Fire crews had rushed to the scene to fight a smaller initial blaze when the wagons blew up in a giant explosion
Sounds like they hadn't covered "BLEVE" yet in fire school.

Schade.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut  2004-2-18 4:47:23 PM||   2004-2-18 4:47:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 More from the unmistakable Debka-files:

"DEBKAfile's exclusive sources in Tehran report:

Little credence is given in Tehran to the official claim that the colossal train explosion which killed at least 300 people and razed five villages in the northeastern Khorassan province Wednesday was caused by colliding wagons carrying industrial chemicals and fertilizers, as well as diesel fuel and cotton. Such flammable freights are usually shipped separately in Iran.

DEBKAfile’s sources note that Iranian officials, two days before a highly controversial parliamentary election, are doing their best to play down the disaster outside Neyshabur which rocked houses 50 miles away in Mashad. The Islamic Republican News Agency tried to blame an earth tremor of 3.6 magnitude, but the US Geological Institute in Colorado said no seismic activity was recorded in the area.

Most of the dead were fire and rescue workers, but also the city’s governor Mojtaba Farahmand-Nekou, its mayor and fire chief.

DEBKA’s sources in Tehran have heard unconfirmed reports that the disaster was no accident, but possibly sabotage carried out by anti-government forces in Khorassan province, which borders on Afghanistan. This report ties in with another that claims the train was not carrying innocent industrial cargoes but hundreds of tons of explosive materials Iran was smuggling into Afghanistan via the Shiite city of Herat to be used by Iranian saboteurs and agents for guerrilla attacks on US troops and the forces of President Hamid Karzai, as well for supplying the Taleban in their Kandahar stronghold.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that there were a series of blasts; the first inside the Neyshabur train station was powerful enough to trigger a second explosion in the remote station of Khayyam. There, it set ablaze another train carrying fuel and other flammable material.

Iran has long used Khorassan province as a conduit for smuggling thousands of its agents into Afghanistan. But the province is also home to nearly two million Afghan refugees, some of whom hire out as agents to the Kabul government or the US military. The suggestion is that a group of these agents were ordered to blow up the train when it pulled into Neyshabur. Their mission: to deter the Iranians from further meddling in Afghanistan.

It would not have been hard to persuade Afghan refugees to undertake the mission. As Sunni Muslims, they harbor strong feelings of resentment against their discrimination at the hands of Iran’s Shiite majority. Three years ago, Afghans were responsible for a large explosion in Mashad, an attack launched after Iran ordered the destruction of a makeshift mosque the refugees had built. Several weeks later, a similar blast occurred in Zahedan, capital of Iran’s Baluchestan province, where Iranian authorities had pulled down another mosque constructed by the refugees.

It just so happens that in the historic town of Neyshabur, site of Wednesday’s horror, the 11th century poet Omar Khayam was born and buried."

To bad this is'nt coming from a reliable source.
Posted by Evert Visser  2004-2-18 4:47:40 PM|| [http://chinditz.blog-city.com/]  2004-2-18 4:47:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 I don't want to be paranoid or anything, but:

At 5:29:45 a.m. local time...the device exploded with a force equivalent to 19 kilotons of TNT. The shock wave was felt over 160 km away...The military reported it as a accidental explosion at a munitions dump, and the actual cause was not publicly acknowledged until August 6.

But really, fertilizer, diesel fuel, and cotton? This must've been the homemade explosives supply train.
Posted by Anonymous 2004-2-18 5:58:10 PM||   2004-2-18 5:58:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 I don't want to be paranoid or anything, but:

At 5:29:45 a.m. local time...the device exploded with a force equivalent to 19 kilotons of TNT. The shock wave was felt over 160 km away...The military reported it as a accidental explosion at a munitions dump, and the actual cause was not publicly acknowledged until August 6.

But really, fertilizer, diesel fuel, and cotton? This must've been the homemade explosives supply train.
Posted by Anonymous 2004-2-18 6:00:04 PM||   2004-2-18 6:00:04 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 Well, dammit, #18 was supposed to be me explaining that #17 was me. Instead it reposted the comment and pointlessly screwed it up.

I find that Rantburg WILL NOT allow me to embed links when I post from Netscape, but will when I post from Konqueror (which I don't like to use). It apparently doesn't like me to make my name a link, either.

Sorry, everyone. Sorry. I'll just back slowly away from the keyboard now.
Posted by Angie Schultz 2004-2-18 6:04:14 PM|| [http://darkblogules.blogspot.com]  2004-2-18 6:04:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 It really must suck to be the Black Hats.

Angie - LOL - don't back away (!!!) - it happens to everyone, now & then. One of my favorite historical bits is by either Vinton Cerf or Bob Khan (KAAAHHHNNN!!!) who invented TCP in '74 (pre-IP) - paraphrasing, he said the wonder wasn't that you build an onion and drop it onto the network to be peeled by the intended recipient(s) - that's just simple logic... no the wonder is that the damned thing works at all!
Posted by .com 2004-2-18 7:23:35 PM||   2004-2-18 7:23:35 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 Grrr...this excerpt from the end of this article in the Independent:

Because of the large number of natural catastrophes in Iran, local emergency teams are regarded as some of the best in the world. But local people are becoming concerned about lax safety standards, which are blamed for exacerbating the death toll in natural disasters and leading to unnecessary man-made accidents. Iran has the highest rate of road deaths in the world and suffers frequent plane crashes. US sanctions make it hard to obtain spare parts for its aged fleet of aircraft.

Lousy, good for nothing Americans with their evil sanctions for absolutely no reason at all...
Posted by Seafarious  2004-2-18 8:41:36 PM||   2004-2-18 8:41:36 PM|| Front Page Top

19:42 Dqem
21:09 Dqem
21:05 Dqem
09:44 Raptor
08:21 Jennie Taliaferro
02:07 Aris Katsaris
01:53 Aris Katsaris
01:06 Lucky
00:37 Lucky
00:07 Lucky
23:50 Lucky
23:02 Mike Sylwester
22:39 Mike Sylwester
22:15 Korora
22:00 badanov
21:52 Stephen
21:45 Alaska Paul
21:27 Dcreeper
21:24 Lone Ranger
21:18 Hyper
21:12 .com
20:58 .com
20:55 Frank G
20:46 .com









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com