Petrol tanker exploded and killed over sixty people in a street in Haiti’s second-largest city Cap-Haitien.
Gatekeepers News reports that Deputy Mayor Patrick Almonor on Tuesday said the truck which was carrying gasoline is believed to have flipped over after the driver lost control while swerving to avoid a motorcycle taxi.
“It’s horrible what happened. ‘We lost so many lives,” said Almonor who stated that he had seen more than 50 people “burned alive” and that it was “impossible to identify them. “We have now counted 60 deaths.”
Almonor said around 20 houses in the area were also set ablaze by the explosion, but that no details were yet available on possible victim numbers inside the homes.
It was gathered that pedestrians tried to scoop the spilled fuel which is in short supply as Haiti grapples with a severe fuel shortage caused by the tightening grip of criminal gangs on the capital Port-au-Prince.
Mayor Pierre Yvrose told Reuters that the local hospital was stretched trying to treat the injured.
‘I learned, with desolation and emotion, the sad news of the explosion, last night, in Cap-Haitien, of a tanker truck which transported gasoline,’ Prime Minister Ariel Henry wrote on Twitter.
Gatekeepers News reports that the government has declared three days of mourning for the dead. The PM promised field hospitals would be rapidly deployed to help care for the blast victims.
“Three days of national mourning will be decreed throughout the land, in memory of the victims of this tragedy which has devastated the whole Haitian nation,” he said.
