An explosion ripped through a steel plant in western Turkiye on Monday, killing 16 people and injuring 13, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, announcing investigations into the tragedy.

Eight workers were trapped at the HABAS steel factory about 60 kilometres north of the port city of Izmir, where the blast struck around midday (2pm PKT), governor Suleyman Elban said.

Footage posted online showed a huge cloud of thick smoke pouring into the sky as flames appeared to engulf a tall structure within the HABAS Demir Celik plant in Aliaga.

“The circumstances surrounding this tragic incident, which has deeply saddened our nation, including how and why it happened, whether there was any negligence and who bears responsibility, will be established,” Erdogan said on television, adding that two of the injured were in serious condition.

HABAS is a privately owned group and one of Turkey’s top steel producers.

Crane collapse

According to Izmir’s governor, the blast was caused by an overhead crane that collapsed into a large industrial furnace used during the liquid steel casting process.

“While a boiler replacement operation was being carried out at the HABAS iron and steel factory, the overhead crane fell and landed in the arc furnace, causing an explosion in the steel mill behind it,” Elban told reporters, referring to a large electric-powered steelmaking furnace.

An eyewitness, Deniz Ulker, said it felt like an “earthquake”.

“When I looked at the factory across the street, thick black smoke was coming out. A fire broke out where the chimney was,” Ulker told Anadolu news agency.

“It was like a bomb going off,” said Turan Ilbay, who works as a truck driver at the factory and also spoke to Anadolu.

Izmir mayor Cemil Tugay said on X that rescue teams were “continuing their work to remove the collapsed platform” and that those affected were factory workers.

Safety issues

Workers’ groups said there was a long record of safety issues at HABAS. Contacted by an AFP journalist, HABAS declined to answer questions.

Before Monday’s explosion, the Evrensel daily said at least 11 workers had died over the past decade while working there.

Turkiye’s Labour Party, a small Marxist faction, said on X it was the third time in three weeks that workers had lost their lives at HABAS.

It said one man died after falling eight metres from a ladder on October 21, while another died when a tyre he was inflating on a construction machine exploded.

Outside the hospital where the injured were taken, two representatives of the leftist Aegean Workers’ Collective were arrested while trying to make a statement about workplace safety issues, a group spokesman said.

“The HABAS management’s blind greed for profit has resulted in a major disaster today,” their spokesman Oktay Turk told AFP.

“Those responsible for this massacre must be brought to justice,” he said, calling for the immediate release of his colleagues.

The pro-Kurdish DEM party, in a statement, called the disaster “unacceptable”.

“The causes of the explosion, any possible negligence and lack of oversight must be revealed transparently, and no one responsible must go unpunished.”