Explosion at luxury Havana hotel kills 22, injures dozens

HAVANA (AP) — A potent explosion apparently brought about by a all-natural fuel leak killed at the very least 22 men and women, including a child, and hurt dozens Friday when it blew absent outer partitions from a luxurious hotel in the coronary heart of Cuba’s funds.

No vacationers had been being at Havana’s 96-area Hotel Saratoga mainly because it was going through renovations, Havana Gov. Reinaldo García Zapata advised the Communist Occasion newspaper Granma.

“It’s not a bomb or an attack. It is a tragic accident,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who frequented the site, explained in a tweet.

Dr. Julio Guerra Izquierdo, chief of medical center providers at the Ministry of Overall health, instructed reporters that at the very least 74 persons experienced been injured. Among the them had been 14 young children, according to a tweet from Díaz-Canel’s workplace.



Díaz-Canel reported family members in properties in the vicinity of the resort afflicted by the explosion experienced been transferred to safer places.

Cuban condition Tv noted the explosion was caused by a truck that experienced been supplying organic gasoline to the resort, but did not provide details on how the gas ignited. A white tanker truck was viewed becoming eliminated from the web-site as rescue personnel hosed it down with drinking water.

Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García stated the hotel was scheduled to reopen Tuesday.