Mon, Aug 16, 2021 page4

• Fuel blast in Lebanon kills 28

  BITTER MEMORIES: The nighttime tragedy overwhelmed local medical facilities and revived memories of an enormous explosion at the Port of Beirut in August last year

  • AFP, BEIRUT
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  At least 28 people were killed and nearly 80 others injured when a fuel tank yesterday exploded in northern Lebanon, authorities and medics said, scalding a crowd that was clamoring for gasoline in the crisis-hit country.

  The nighttime tragedy overwhelmed medical facilities and heaped new misery on a nation already beset by an economic crisis and severe fuel shortages that have crippled hospitals and caused long power cuts.

  It revived bitter memories of an enormous explosion at the Port of Beirut in August last year, which killed more than 200 people and destroyed swathes of the capital.

  

  People gather as smoke billows following a fuel tank explosion in al-Tleil, Lebanon, yesterday.

  Photo: AFP

  An adviser to the Lebanese Ministry Of Health said the death toll from the blast in al-Tleil village, in the remote northern region of Akkar, had climbed to 28, while the Lebanese Red Cross earlier put the number of wounded at 79.

  The military said a fuel tank that “had been confiscated by the army to distribute to citizens” exploded just before 2am, leaving soldiers also among the wounded.

  On Saturday, the army began raiding gas stations to curb hoarding by suppliers after Lebanese Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh announced last week that he would scrap fuel subsidies.

  The official National News Agency (NNA) reported that the blast followed scuffles between “residents that gathered around the container to fill up gasoline” overnight.

  Hospitals in Akkar, one of Lebanon’s poorest regions near the border with Syria, and in the northern port city of Tripoli said that they had to turn away many of the injured because they were ill-equipped to treat severe burns.

  “The corpses are so charred that we can’t identify them,” said Yassine Metlej, an employee at a Akkar hospital where seven bodies and dozens of injured were brought.

  “Some have lost their faces, others their arms,” Metlej added.

  The head of Lebanon’s High Relief Council (HRC), Mohammad Kheir, said that authorities were “in contact with Turkey and Egypt to transfer the most serious cases abroad,” the NNA reported.

  “This is a real catastrophe, like the Beirut explosion,” he said.

  Unable to seek treatment in Akkar, Ismail al-Sheikh, 23, who sustained burns to his arms and legs, was driven by his sister, Marwa, to the Geitawi Hospital in Beirut.

  “At night, we were informed that the army was distributing gasoline ... so people flocked to fill plastic containers ... straight from the tank,” Marwa said.

  “Most of the people who were there said that someone had thrown a lighter on the floor” causing a fire that sparked the explosion, she added.

  Other eyewitnesses said that shots were fired before the blast.

  Grief and anger filled the corridors outside the emergency rooms.

  “What am I going to tell my sister?” asked a man in a military uniform whose brother-in-law was reported missing and whose brother had been hospitalized.

  Lebanon, hit by a financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the planet’s worst since the 1850s, has been grappling with soaring poverty, a plummeting currency and dire fuel shortages.

  On Wednesday last week, Salameh said that the central bank could not afford to fund fuel subsidies due to dwindling foreign reserves, saying that importers were hoarding fuel to sell it at higher prices on the black market.
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