Rescuers enter site of Albania blast
Rescuers were preparing today to enter the heart of a massive blast site at an Albanian army ammunition dump, where a chain of explosions killed at least five people and injured 243.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha expressed fears many more bodies could be found among the wreckage, where the explosions started yesterday and continued until early today – severely hampering rescue efforts.
Berisha said the blasts were accidentally triggered during work to destroy excess ammunition at Gerdec village, about six miles north of the capital, Tirana.
The first explosion was heard as far away as the Macedonian capital of Skopje, 120 miles away, and prompted a brief suspension of flights at Tirana’s nearby international airport, which was slightly damaged. Authorities evacuated 4,000 people from three villages and the surrounding area using armoured personnel carriers.
Today, hundreds of troops and police cordoned off the still-smoking depot, and army engineers were preparing to enter the heart of the blasts.
Interior Minister Bujar Nishani said the death toll stood at five. A total of 243 people, including several children, had been registered as injured. By early today, 142 remained in hospital, 12 of them in a serious condition.
Nishani’s spokesman, Klodian Branko, said one woman was in a coma.
The destruction of ammunition at the dump was being carried out by an Albanian company that had been subcontracted by Southern Ammunition Company Inc. of Loris, South Carolina, Berisha said, adding that there had been no foreign citizens in the area. In the past year, about 6,000-7,000 tons of ammunition had been destroyed.
Berisha described the blasts as an accident.
Footage from Albanian television showed a massive ball of fire shooting up from the site, while shrapnel and shell fragments rained down on homes and vehicles. Houses more than a mile away were damaged by the blast, which caused a massive crater at the depot.
The explosion also damaged a major electricity transmission point, leaving the area without power, authorities said.
Explosions continued for some 14 hours. Berisha said most of the injured had suffered burns and psychological shock.
Italy and Greece took 11 and eight injured people respectively to be treated at their hospitals, while several other countries offered help and support.
In neighbouring Kosovo, where most of the population is ethnic Albanian, hundreds of people lined up at a Pristina hospital to give blood, and NATO-led peacekeepers were sending blood reserves by helicopters, officials said.
Macedonia sent in blood today, while Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki flew to Tirana to offer assistance – donating blood himself.
Nishani, Albania’s interior minister, said 121 people had been working at the site when the explosions started. Albanian authorities quoted witnesses as reporting that there had been a delay of about 10 minutes between the initial blast and the explosions that followed, and that many of the workers had managed to run away.
Albin Mecaj, 22, who works at the depot, said about 80 people had been working on destroying ammunition at the time of the explosion.
Albania has some 100,000 tons of excess ammunition stored in former army depots across the country, according to Defence Minister Fatmir Mediu.
NATO countries, and particularly the US, Canada and Norway, have been helping with funding for Albania to destroy excess ammunition and obsolete weaponry.
“The problem of ammunition in Albania is one of the gravest, and a continuous threat,” Berisha said. “There is a colossal, a crazy amount of them since 1945 until now.”
He said he did not exclude human error in the blast, but added that the ammunition could have exploded spontaneously because of its age.
Accidents have occurred at ammunition dumps in Albania in the past, although Saturday’s was by far the worst. Three years ago explosions at army weapon depots in southern Albania killed an army officer and injured four others.
