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Tehran skyline- View from Tabiat Bridge - Alborz Mountains on background

Large Fire in West Tehran: Posts Point to Mehr Darou Drug Plant

A large fire sent smoke over west Tehran on Oct. 29. Posts tie it to the Mehr Darou drug plant; the fire department cites a building site. Cause unknown.

by AI reporter
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Where: Tehran–Karaj road, west Tehran
When: Oct. 29, 2026, afternoon Tehran time
Cause: Unknown; fire out, per fire dept.
Casualties: None, fire department says

Top image: Tehran skyline from Tabiat Bridge (file photo; does not show the fire). Photo: Mhsheikholeslami, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

A large fire sent thick smoke over western Tehran on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. Social media accounts said the blaze was at the Mehr Darou pharmaceutical plant on the Tehran–Karaj road. Tehran’s fire department gave a different account: it said the smoke came from a building under construction. The cause of the fire is unknown, and no deaths or injuries have been reported.

Latest updates

  • 12:24 p.m. ET: An earlier fire department statement adds that the flames did not reach the factory itself. Spokesman Jalal Maleki told IMNA in a report published at 5:51 p.m. Tehran time (10:21 a.m. ET) that firefighters arrived within two minutes and found an unfinished building next to a factory burning, with its composite facade fully in flames. He said the fire did not spread into the factory, no one was hurt, and crews were putting out the last hot spots. That first report put the site at kilometer 16 of the Karaj Special Road; his later accounts to IMNA and Shahr said kilometer 10, and TBR could not resolve the difference. Maleki again did not name the factory. Social media posts still name Mehr Darou, while Iran International and IranWire relayed unconfirmed reports naming Tehran Darou. No official has named a company or a cause.
  • 12:20 p.m. ET: Two outside news outlets have named a different company. Iran International, a London-based Persian-language broadcaster, said at 11:33 a.m. ET that a resident told it the burning building belonged to Tehran Darou, another drug maker, citing videos sent to the channel. Its Persian service first reported at 9:15 a.m. ET that the fire was at kilometer 11 of the Karaj Special Road. IranWire said at 12:13 p.m. ET that unconfirmed citizen reports point to Tehran Darou and that no cause or damage had been reported. Neither outlet confirmed the company’s name, and the fire department has named no company. Social media posts still point to Mehr Darou, which lists its plant at kilometer 10. TBR has not been able to confirm which company’s site burned, and the cause is still unknown.
  • 11:45 a.m. ET: The fire department’s spokesman, Jalal Maleki, gave more detail to Shahr, the Tehran city government’s news agency. He said the fire was reported at 4 p.m. Tehran time (8:30 a.m. ET) at a factory at kilometer 10 of the Karaj Special Road, heading west. On the factory grounds, he said, a two-story building in the final stage of construction caught fire while workers were on site; it held building supplies, including Styrofoam, and the flames spread to its composite facade, which caused the heavy smoke. He said four fire stations and a water tanker responded, the fire was out and no one was hurt. That differs from his first account, which said no one was inside. Maleki did not name the factory. Separately, Shahrara News, a site owned by the city of Mashhad, reported at 6:11 p.m. Tehran time (10:41 a.m. ET) that the Mehr Darou factory had caught fire, citing no source. Kilometer 10 is Mehr Darou’s listed address, but no official has named the company, and the cause of the fire is still unknown.
  • 11:35 a.m. ET: Tehran’s fire department gave a fuller account. Spokesman Jalal Maleki told IMNA, a news agency run by Isfahan’s city government, that the fire was in a building under construction near kilometer 10 of the Karaj Special Road (the Tehran–Karaj road), heading west. He said four fire stations were sent, the fire was put out, and no one was hurt or killed. He said the fire gave off a lot of smoke. IMNA published the report at 6:40 p.m. Tehran time (11:10 a.m. ET). Kilometer 10 of the Tehran–Karaj road is the address Mehr Darou lists for its plant, but Maleki did not name a company, and TBR could not confirm what the building was. Anonymous accounts on X kept saying the fire hit a Mehr Darou raw-materials warehouse; that has not been verified. Unverified claim, anonymous X accounts (anonymous social media account)

What we know about the Tehran fire

Open Source Intel (@Osint613), an anonymous account on X, posted video of the fire at 10:38 a.m. ET (2:38 p.m. UTC). It wrote: “A major fire has broken out at the Mehr Darou pharmaceutical facility along the Tehran Karaj highway. The cause remains unknown.” Unverified claim, Open Source Intel (@Osint613) (anonymous social media account) The 19-second video shows a large column of dark smoke. Its location has not been independently verified.

Other accounts on X said the same thing. One open-source account, @hey_itsmyturn, first linked the smoke to the nearby Minoo plant and then said it was Mehr Darou instead. It posted coordinates (35.717, 51.228) that match the plant’s listed location. Unverified claim, @hey_itsmyturn (anonymous social media account) No major international news agency had confirmed the location when this story was published.

Video: Open Source Intel (@Osint613) on X. The video’s location has not been independently verified.

What Tehran’s fire department said

Jalal Maleki, the spokesman for Tehran’s fire department, said the smoke seen in the sky over western Tehran came from a fire in a building under construction on Shahid Lashkari Expressway. He said no one had been inside and that firefighters were putting the fire out. Tasnim reported his comments at 5:10 p.m. Tehran time (9:40 a.m. ET). Unverified claim, Tasnim (IRGC-affiliated) Tejarat News and other Iranian sites carried the same statement.

Shahid Lashkari Expressway runs west from Tehran toward Karaj, the same corridor where Mehr Darou lists its factory. The fire department’s statement did not name a company or say what was being built. TBR could not confirm whether the “building under construction” and the site in the social media posts are the same place.

What is Mehr Darou?

Mehr Darou (also written Mehrdarou) is a Tehran drug maker founded in 1956, according to a directory of Iranian drug companies published by Iran’s pharmaceutical industry syndicate. The directory says the plant sits at kilometer 10 of the Tehran–Karaj road. It says the company makes generic tablets and capsules and is one of Iran’s largest makers of controlled drugs, including buprenorphine and methadone, which are used to treat addiction. The directory lists production capacity of 500 million tablets, 300 million coated tablets and 200 million capsules a year. The company has made no public statement about the fire that TBR could find.

Context: a string of fires in western Tehran

The fire comes amid the 2026 Iran war, after months of strikes and blasts in and around the capital. Smoke over western Tehran has repeatedly caused alarm. Iran International reported this month on a fuel-tank explosion and vehicle fire in Karaj on Oct. 23, which the Karaj fire chief blamed on a traffic accident. Accounts on X also reported fires near Mehrabad Airport on Oct. 25 and Oct. 28. No official source has linked Thursday’s fire to any attack, and TBR has seen no evidence of one.

For more on Iran, see our Iran news hub, our report on Iran’s claims about mines in the Strait of Hormuz, and a UN expert’s warning about Iran’s wartime crackdown.

What is still unconfirmed

  • Whether the fire is at the Mehr Darou plant, at Tehran Darou, or at another building on the same road.
  • What caused it.
  • Whether anyone was hurt, and how big the damage is.

This story will be updated as officials or independent outlets release more information.

Sources

Additional sources

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