The fire settled in an underground room where there was also gasoline, a source of security
Beirut:
An explosion and a fuel tank fire in the Lebanese capital killed four people on Friday, rescuers said as panic spread through a city already ravaged by a monster explosion in August.
A Beirut TV station said more than 30 people were injured in the blaze, with a medical source adding that three children were hospitalized with burns.
Firefighters using movable ladders evacuated people from buildings in the bustling Tariq al-Jdide neighborhood.
“The number of victims has risen to four,” the Lebanese Red Cross said on its Twitter account, updating the death toll of two.
The secretary general of the Red Cross, Georges Kettane, added that the “wounded had been taken to hospital”, the national news agency ANI reported.
Lebanese Al-Jadeed television reported that more than 30 people were injured as it broadcast images of flames in a street and sounds of people screaming in panic.
“I was afraid of such an accident”
The state-run news agency said a fuel tank exploded, causing a fire and killing people.
Fire Lt. Ali Najm said there was a fire and explosion in a warehouse containing an oil tank, adding that the cause of the explosion was still unknown.
A security source said the fire had settled in an underground room where there was also gasoline.
The source said authorities have arrested the owner who operates one of the many private generator services that provide electricity to residents when frequent blackouts occur, the source said.
In recent weeks, the Beirut Municipality has searched for warehouses that could break the law or pose a danger to residential areas, Governor Marwan Aboud told Al-Jadeed.
“We feared that such an accident would happen,” Aboud said, adding that around 100 sites had been identified as suspect.
“We have ordered some of them to close and asked others to put in place procedures to protect the public,” he added.
Private generator services are proliferating across the country, sometimes accused of being mafias taking advantage of power shortages, which for decades have forced citizens to resort to subscriptions to cope with frequent blackouts.
Friday’s explosion was the latest in a series of horrific events in a country hit by an unprecedented economic crisis and devoid of most basic public services.
Several fires have broken out in the port of Beirut since a cataclysmic explosion on August 4 killed 203 people, injured at least 6,500 others and devastated parts of the capital.
The explosion came as Lebanon grapples with its worst financial crisis since the civil war and political conflicts of 1975-1990, made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.
Much of public opinion attributes the August 4 explosion to what it sees as a corrupt and incompetent class of leaders and politicians who have remained virtually the same for decades.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
