At least 20 killed and 79 injured in fuel tank explosion in Lebanon

Hospitals were reportedly turning away burns victims after the blast at a storage tank that had been confiscated by the army

Black smoke rises from the scene where a fuel tank exploded in Tleil village, north Lebanon. Picture: AP

At least 20 people have been killed and 79 injured in a fuel tank explosion in Lebanon’s northern region of Akkar.

The cause of the explosion is not immediately clear.

Military and security sources said that the Lebanese army had seized a hidden fuel storage tank in the town of Tleil and was in the midst of handing out gasoline to residents when the explosion took place, Reuters reported.

About 200 people were nearby at the time of the explosion, eyewitnesses said. There were differing accounts as to the cause of the explosion.

⚠️UPDATE⚠️: our teams have transported 20 dead bodies and more than 7 injured from the fuel tanker explosion in #AKKAR to hospitals in the area. pic.twitter.com/MgWdpC61Pn

— Lebanese Red Cross (@RedCrossLebanon) August 15, 2021

“There was a rush of people, and arguments between some of them led to gunfire which hit the tank of gasoline and so it exploded,” said a security source, who noted that there were members of army and security forces among the casualties.

The local Al-Jadeed TV channel reported from eyewitnesses that an individual who ignited a lighter was the cause.

Abdelrahman, whose face and body was covered in gauze as he laid in Tripoli’s al-Salam hospital, was one of those in line to get some precious gasoline.

“There were hundreds gathered there, right next to the tank, and God only knows what happened to them,” he said.

The Red Cross said its teams were still searching the explosion site, sharing on Twitter a photo of several people walking inside a large crater.

Angry residents in Akkar, one of Lebanon’s poorest areas, gathered at the site and set fire to two dump trucks, according to a Reuters witness.

Some of the injured were sent to hospitals in nearby Tripoli, while others were sent to Beirut, said Rashid Maqsood, an official with the Islamic Medical Association.

The majority of the injured are in serious condition, according to Dr Salah Ishaq of al-Salam Hospital. 

“We can’t accommodate them, we don’t have the capabilities. It’s a very bad situation.”

Yassine Metlej, an employee at an Akkar hospital, said that the facility had received at least seven corpses and dozens of burn victims. 

Speaking to AFP he said: “The corpses are so charred that we can’t identify them."

He said the hospital had to turn away most of the wounded because it is unable to treat severe burns.

An employee at another hospital who asked to be identified only as Mohammad said more than 30 wounded people had come to the facility.

“They all have burns,” he said, adding that many were turned away because the hospital is not equipped to treat such cases.

The explosion comes less than two weeks after Lebanon marked the first anniversary of a blast at the Beirut port last summer that killed more than 200 people.

• The Guardian