A day before Iran’s planned naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, an explosion destroyed a residential building in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, which is located on the strait, on Saturday.

A four-year-old girl was killed in the explosion, while local media footage allegedly showed a member of the security forces being carried away by rescuers.

Iran is planning a naval exercise on Sunday and Monday in the strait, narrow mouth The Persian Gulf, through which a fifth of the entire oil trade passes. The US military has warned Iran not to threaten its warships or commercial traffic in the strait.

State television quoted a local fire official as blaming a gas leak for the explosion. The media reported that at least 14 people were injured in the explosion.

Local newspaper Sobh-e Sahel published a video of the correspondent speaking in front of the building. The footage included a sequence showing a man in a green security force uniform being carried out on a stretcher. He was wearing a neck brace and appeared to be in pain as he covered the branch insignia on his uniform with his left hand.

The newspaper did not acknowledge that a member of the security forces was killed elsewhere in its report. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has not spoken about the explosion, except to deny that the commander of the Guard’s navy was injured.

Another blast, attributed to a gas explosion, killed five people in the southwestern city of Ahvaz on Saturday, state media reported.

Iran remains tense because of President Trump’s threat to potentially run a military strike on the country for the killing of peaceful protesters or the possible mass execution of those detained in a large-scale crackdown on demonstrations.

saying to CBS News on Thursday night on the red carpet for the premiere of “Melania” — a documentary that provides an inside look at first lady Melania Trump’s life in the days after her husband’s 2024 election victory — Mr. Trump said he had “had” talks with Iran in the past few days and “planned” to have more.

Mr. Trump said that in those conversations, he “told them two things. No. 1, no nuclear weapons. And No. 2, stop killing the protesters. They’re killing them by the thousands.”

At least 10 US warships – including an aircraft carrier and at least five destroyers – headed towards Iran’s coastal waters on Friday.

“We have a lot of very large, very powerful ships that are sailing toward Iran right now,” Mr. Trump told CBS News on Thursday. “And it would be great if we didn’t have to use them.”

Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, wrote Saturday night that “structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing.” CBS News sought clarification from the White House on Friday about any ongoing direct talks between the Trump administration and Tehran.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi called for de-escalation on Saturday and said Egypt was working to bring the US and Iran to the negotiating table to achieve a “peaceful and comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear file,” according to a statement in his phone conversation with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Qatar said in a statement that Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited Tehran on Saturday and met with Larijani on “efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region”.