The sound of an apparent large explosion was heard from Iran's Isfahan city on Monday afternoon, the head of the judiciary in the province said, according to Iran's ISNA news agency.
"In the afternoon, there was a noise like an explosion, but we don't have any information from security forces on the source of the noise," Gholamreza Ansari was quoted as saying.
A major Iranian nuclear research centre is located near Isfahan city, although none of the Iranian reports of the blast said whether the explosion was near it.
Iranian media provided contradictory information about the incident, which came less that three weeks after a massive explosion at a military base near Tehran that killed 17 members of the Revolutionary Guard including the head of its missile forces.
Earlier, the Fars news agency reported a large blast in the province but then removed the report from its website.
The Mehr news agency cited other Iranian news media, which it did not identify, as reporting that a blast had taken place at a petrol station at a town near Isfahan city. However, it also quoted the deputy governor of the province as saying he had no reports of a big explosion in his region.
"So far no report of a major explosion has been heard from any government body in Isfahan," Deputy Governor Mohammad Mehdi was quoted as saying by the semi-official news agency.
On Nov. 12, Iran said a massive explosion at a military base 45 km west of Tehran killed 17 Revolutionary Guards, including the head of the elite force's missile programme. Iran said that explosion, which could be heard as far as the capital, was caused by an accident while weapons were being moved.
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