BEIRUT – Lebanon reeled on Monday from a deadly explosion that burned alive people desperate to fill plastic containers with fuel in a country sinking ever deeper into darkness and chaos.
At least 28 people were killed when the fuel tank, which was swarmed by residents clamouring to fill their vehicles amid crippling shortages, blew up early on Sunday in the northern region of Akkar.
The latest deadly disaster comes as Lebanon grapples with an economic crisis described by the World Bank as one of the world’s worst since the 1850s.
Nearly 80 people were also injured in the blast, many of them with burns that further overwhelmed hospitals struggling to function without electricity, medics said.
On Monday, foreign countries and UN agencies were scrambling emergency aid to help exhausted health workers cope with the new influx of serious injuries and run DNA tests on the charred remains of the dead.
Shortages of key commodities have accelerated and compounded one another in recent days, leaving much of Lebanon struggling to source fuel, gas and even bread, with buying power pummelled by the currency losing more than 90 percent of its value on the black market.
The country’s six million inhabitants now fear the internet and drinking water will be next to disappear.
The blast in Akkar, one of the most impoverished parts of the country, was a deadly direct consequence of a vicious cycle fast turning the region’s erstwhile beacon of modernity into a failed state.
The scenes of horror piled trauma on a country still coming to terms with last year’s cataclysmic Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people and disfigured the city.
Nobody has been held to account for the port blast, caused by the poor storage of enormous quantities of ammonium nitrate that had languished there for years.
Across the country, with no more than two hours a day of mains electricity supply, many shops and restaurants remain closed, unable to source fuel for their generators.
Many private and public sector employees have been told to stay home and most of the rest have often ended up doing the same for lack of transport options.
Stuck in an endless queue of cars at a Beirut petrol station, Mohammed, who did not want to give his full name, said he could see no light at the end of the tunnel.
“We need to leave Lebanon. We all need to get out,” said the 30-year-old engineer according to AFP. “I’ve started working on it, and God help those who stay.”
His six-month-old baby had cried through the sweltering night, and his family was being forced to spend hard-earned savings on operating a private generator to keep his grandmother’s oxygen concentrator running.
“There’s no more hope,” he said.
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