Some of the bodies without faces or hands... Panic in Lebanon due to the massive fire

Two of the injured in the fire in a Lebanese hospital

Yassin Mitlaj, an employee at a hospital in Akkar in northern Lebanon, said that at least seven bodies (out of 20 bodies) and dozens of people with burns were taken to the hospital, and he told AFP that the bodies were "burned to the extent that we cannot identify them. Some are faceless and some are faceless. without hands."

He explained that the hospital was forced to refuse to receive most of the wounded because it was not equipped to treat severely burned patients, so some of them were transferred to Al Salam Hospital in Tripoli, 25 km away, which is the only one equipped in the area.

At least 20 people were killed and 79 injured as a result of a fuel tanker explosion in the Akkar region in northern Lebanon, the Red Cross announced today, Sunday, amid a severe fuel crisis that paralyzes public facilities and services in this country.

There are no details available at the present time about the cause of the explosion, which occurred at a time when Lebanon has been suffering for weeks from a shortage of fuel, which negatively affects the ability of public utilities, private institutions and even hospitals to provide their services.

Videos spread on social media showed a large fire at the site of the explosion.

"Look how the people are burning," a man said in a video posted by a local media, which AFP could not independently verify.

The Red Cross said on Twitter that its teams had "transferred 20 bodies" from the site of a fuel tanker explosion in Akkar to hospitals in the area.

He added that 79 other people were injured.

Lebanon is witnessing a severe economic crisis that the World Bank has ranked among the worst in the world since 1850, which has caused the lira to lose more than ninety percent of its value, while 78 percent of the Lebanese are living below the poverty line and 36 percent in extreme poverty, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The National News Agency reported, quoting its representative, that "the circumstances and circumstances of the explosion are still unclear, pending the results of the investigation," noting that the injured "were mostly those who gathered around the tank to fill the fuel from it."

The delegate stated that "a force from the army came at the time to deal with matters, and after the army left the place at night, there was a huge stampede by the people of the area to fill the rest of the gasoline in the tank, where the explosion occurred."

And the agency reported that "a search operation is underway in the vicinity of the explosion of the gasoline tank in search of possible missing persons."

The explosion occurred in Akkar less than two weeks after Lebanon commemorated the first anniversary of the explosion of the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, which killed more than 200 people.

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