DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An explosion tore through an apartment building Saturday in Iran 's port city of Bandar Abbas, killing a 4-year-old girl as local media footage purportedly showed a security force member being carried out by rescuers.
The blast happened a day before a planned naval drill by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes. The U.S. military has warned Iran not to threaten its warships or commercial traffic in the strait, on which Bandar Abbas sits.
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An apartment building is seen after an explosion in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
An apartment building is seen after an explosion in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
An apartment building is seen after an explosion in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays at the grave of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, commemorating 47th anniversary of his return from exile during 1979 Islamic Revolution, just outside Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays at the grave of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, shown in the photo at right, commemorating 47th anniversary of his return from exile during 1979 Islamic Revolution, as Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson Hassan sits at rear, just outside Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
State television quoted a local fire official as blaming the blast on a gas leak. Media reported at least 14 others injured in the explosion.
A local newspaper, Sobh-e Sahel, aired footage of a correspondent speaking in front of the building. The footage included a sequence that showed a man in a green security force uniform being carried out on a stretcher. He wore a neck brace and appeared to be in pain, his left hand covering the branch insignia on his uniform.
The newspaper did not acknowledge the security force member being carried out elsewhere in its reporting. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard did not discuss the blast, other than to deny that a Guard navy commander had been hurt.
Another explosion blamed on a gas explosion Saturday in the southwestern city of Ahvaz killed five people, state media reported.
Iran remains tense over a threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to potentially launch a military strike on the country over the killing of peaceful protesters or the possible mass execution of those detained in a major crackdown over the demonstrations.
Ali Larijani, a top security official in Iran, wrote on X late Saturday that “structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing.” However, there is no public sign of any talks with the United States, which Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly ruled out.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Saturday called for de-escalation and said Egypt is working to bring the U.S. and Iran to the negotiating table to achieve a “peaceful and comprehensive settlement to the Iranian nuclear file," according to a statement on his phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Qatar in a statement said Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited Tehran on Saturday and met with Larijani about “efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region.”
Associated Press writer Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.
An apartment building is seen after an explosion in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
An apartment building is seen after an explosion in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
An apartment building is seen after an explosion in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays at the grave of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, commemorating 47th anniversary of his return from exile during 1979 Islamic Revolution, just outside Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays at the grave of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, shown in the photo at right, commemorating 47th anniversary of his return from exile during 1979 Islamic Revolution, as Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson Hassan sits at rear, just outside Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Newly disclosed government files on Jeffrey Epstein are offering more details about his interactions with the rich and famous after he served time for sex crimes in Florida, and on how much investigators knew about his abuse of underage girls when they decided not to indict him on federal charges nearly two decades ago.
The documents released Friday include Epstein’s communications with former White House advisers, an NFL team co-owner and billionaires including Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
The fallout already includes the resignation of a top official in Slovakia, Miroslav Lajcak, who once had a yearlong term as president of the U.N. General Assembly.
Lajcak resigned after photos and emails were made public detailing meetings he had with Epstein in the years after Epstein was released from jail.
President Donald Trump's Department of Justice said it would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the material it collected during two decades of investigations involving the wealthy financier.
The files, posted to the department’s website, included documents involving Epstein's friendship with Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, and Epstein’s email correspondence with onetime Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and other prominent contacts with people in political, business and philanthropic circles.
Other documents offered a window into various investigations, including ones that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019 and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021, and an earlier inquiry that found evidence of Epstein abusing underage girls but never led to federal charges.
Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, said Saturday that he had accepted the resignation of Lajcak, his national security adviser.
Lajcak, a former Slovak foreign minister, hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing, but emails showed that Epstein had invited him to dinner and other meetings in 2018.
The records also include a March 2018 email from Epstein’s office to former Obama White House general counsel Kathy Ruemmler, inviting her to a get-together with Epstein, Lajcak and Bannon, the conservative activist who served as Trump’s White House strategist in 2017.
Lajcak said his contacts with Epstein were part of his diplomatic duties. Pressure mounted for his ouster from opposition parties and a nationalist partner in Fico’s governing coalition.
The FBI started investigating Epstein in July 2006 and agents expected him to be indicted in May 2007, according to the newly records released. A prosecutor wrote up a proposed indictment after multiple underage girls told police and the FBI that they had been paid to give Epstein sexualized massages.
The draft indicated prosecutors were preparing to charge not just Epstein but also three people who worked for him as personal assistants.
According to interview notes released Friday, an employee at Epstein’s Florida estate told the FBI in 2007 that Epstein once had him buy flowers and deliver them to a student at Royal Palm Beach High School to commemorate her performance in a school play.
The employee, whose name was blacked out, said some of his duties were fanning $100 bills on a table near Epstein’s bed, placing a gun between the mattresses in his bedroom and cleaning up after Epstein’s frequent massages with young girls, including disposing of used condoms.
Ultimately, the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, Alexander Acosta, signed off on a deal that let Epstein avoid federal prosecution. Epstein pleaded guilty instead to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18 and got an 18-month jail sentence. Acosta was Trump's first labor secretary in his earlier term.
The records have thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles about him, commented on his policies or politics, or gossiped about him and his family.
Mountbatten-Windsor's name appears at least several hundred times, including in Epstein’s private emails. In a 2010 exchange, Epstein appeared to try and set him up for a date.
“I have a friend who I think you might enjoy having dinner with,” Epstein wrote.
Mountbatten-Windsor replied that he “would be delighted to see her.” The email was signed “A.”
Epstein, whose emails often contain typographical errors, wrote later in the exchange: “She 26, russian, clevere beautiful, trustworthy and yes she has your email.”
The Justice Department is facing criticism over how it handled the latest disclosure.
One group of Epstein accusers said in a statement that the new documents made it too easy to identify those he abused but not those who might have been involved in Epstein’s criminal activity.
“As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy,” it said.
Meanwhile, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, pressed the department to let lawmakers review unredacted versions of the files as soon as Sunday. He said in a statement that Congress must assess whether the redactions were lawful or improperly shielded people from scrutiny.
Department officials have acknowledged that many records in its files are duplicates, and it was clear from the documents that reviewers took different degrees of care or exercised different standards while blacking out names and other identifying information.
There were multiple documents where a name was left exposed in one copy, but redacted in another.
The released records reinforced the Epstein was, at least before he ran into legal trouble, friendly with Trump and former President Bill Clinton. None of Epstein’s victims who have gone public has accused Trump, a Republican, or Clinton, a Democrat, of wrongdoing. Both men said they had no knowledge Epstein was abusing underage girls.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being indicted.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse. One victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, sued Mountbatten-Windsor, saying she had sexual encounters with him starting at age 17. The now-former prince denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide last year at age 41.
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The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from Versant, CBS and NBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.
Tucker and Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists from around the country contributed to this report.
Follow the AP's coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.
An email that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, and shows a 2009 order of no contact in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
FILE - New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch arrives for NFL owners meetings, in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
FILE - Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, looks round as he leaves after attending the Easter Matins Service at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England, April 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)
An email that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, and shows the cell where Epstein was found unresponsive. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
FILE - Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are photographed Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)
