Havana, May 6 (BNA) A powerful explosion apparently caused by a natural gas leak has killed eight people and injured at least 40 others to the outer walls of a five-star hotel in the heart of the Cuban capital, Associated Press reports. AP) reported.
There were no tourists staying at the 96-room Saratoga hotel because it was undergoing renovation work, Havana Governor Reinaldo Garcia Zapata told the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
It wasn’t a bomb or an attack. “It’s a tragic accident,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who visited the site, said in a tweet on Twitter. The explosion occurred as Cuba struggles to revive a key tourism sector that has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Cuba’s national health minister, Jose Angel Portal, told The Associated Press that hospitals have received about 40 injured people, but estimated that the number may rise as the search continues for people who may have been trapped among the wreckage of a 19th-century structure in the ancient era. Havana neighborhood of the city.
Granma reported that local officials said 13 people are missing. An elementary school adjacent to the hotel was evacuated, and local media said no children were hurt.
Police cordoned off the area as firefighters and rescue workers toiled inside the wreckage of the hotel, which is about 110 yards (100 meters) from the Capitol building in Cuba. The hotel was frequently used by visiting dignitaries and political figures.
Photographer Michel Figueroa said he was walking past the hotel when “the blast threw me to the ground, my head still hurts… Everything was so fast.”
Yazira de la Caridad said the explosion shook her house a block from the hotel: “The whole building moved. I thought it was an earthquake.”
“I still hold my heart in my hands,” she said.
Maye Perez said she rushed to the hotel after receiving a call from her husband, Daniel Serra, who works at a money exchange shop inside the hotel.
She said he told her, “I’m fine, I’m fine. They took us out.” But she couldn’t reach him after that.
AOQ