AL-DAOUSEH, Lebanon (AFP) — Families laid to rest Wednesday
victims of a fuel tank blast that killed at least 28 people in northern Lebanon
amid anger and sorrow over the crisis-hit country's latest tragedy.
اضافة اعلان
The explosion on Sunday in Al-Tleil in the
Akkar region
scorched crowds clamoring for petrol that the army was distributing in light of
severe fuel shortages that have paralyzed a country also beset by medicine, gas
and bread shortages.
The victims included soldiers and Akkar residents who darted
to Al-Tleil after midnight to fill gasoline in plastic containers straight from
a fuel tank that exploded in circumstances that remain unclear.
The tank was among supplies confiscated by the military,
which has lately wrested supplies from alleged fuel hoarders across the
country.
The disaster came on top of an economic crisis branded by
the World Bank as one of the world's worst in modern times and follows an
explosion of poorly stored fertilizer at Beirut port last summer that killed
more than 200 people.
Akkar, one of Lebanon's poorest regions, buried several
blast victims on Wednesday, according to an AFP correspondent.
The village of Al-Daouseh held funerals for four of its
dead, all of whom are from the Shraytih family.
"They died for petrol — if we had fuel this would have
never happened," said Mouin Shraytih who was burying two sons — one 16 and
the other 20.
"Political leaders and officials should consider what
it is like to have two young boys and find them burned and charred in front of
your own eyes," the man in his fifties told AFP at the funeral.
Corpses from the tanker blast had been identified in and
transported from
hospitals hit by power and telecom outages, with even
landlines disrupted.
‘Deprivation’
Dozens had gathered at the family's home when a convoy of
vehicles carrying the corpses arrived from a nearby hospital, an AFP
correspondent said.
Shots were fired into the air as residents threw rice and
flowers over the coffins.
Fawaz Shraytih, a relative of Mouin, was burying two
brothers, both army soldiers.
"What happened is because of deprivation, Akkar is a
deprived region," he said.
But "all we do is pay with our blood," he added,
explaining that soldiers make up the bulk of Al-Daouseh's male population.
There are eight soldiers among his own immediate family, he
said.
Nearly 80 people were injured in the blast, medics said,
many with burns that further overwhelmed hospitals struggling to function
without electricity.
Foreign countries and UN agencies have scrambled emergency
aid to help exhausted health workers cope with the new influx of serious
injuries and run DNA tests to identify charred remains.
A plane was due to arrive in Lebanon on Wednesday to
evacuate severe burns victims to Turkey, the official National News Agency
said.
Lebanon, a country of more than 6 million, is grappling with
soaring poverty rates, with 78 percent of the population living below the
poverty line, according to the United Nations.
The Lebanese pound has lost 90 percent of its black market
value against the dollar while food prices have shot up by up to 400 percent.
The country braced for higher inflation rates after central
bank governor Riad Salameh said last week that the lender can no longer afford
fuel subsidies.
Despite the spiraling crisis, bitterly divided leaders have
yet to agree on a new cabinet a year after the previous one resigned in the
wake of the Beirut blast.
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