Cyprus: Zygi naval base munitions blast

[Mα�ία]

I can't describe how i feel right now..this is unbelievable. they were telling to goverment to move them to a better place and they just ignored them..and now here we are.the Ministry of Defence and the Chief Nat. Guard just resigned. The Chief of Navy was at the site of the explosion and now his missing.3 days mourning announcement by the government.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs7eumqANiI&feature=youtu.be&a

 

Twelve people have been killed and about 30 injured in a blast at a munitions dump in Cyprus.

 

The explosion at 0600 (0300 GMT) is thought to have been caused by brushfires which spread to the depot in the naval base at Zygi.

 

The island's largest power station has been knocked out, resulting in widespread power cuts.

 

The munitions depot contained explosives seized in 2009 from a ship travelling from Iran.

 

There is no indication that the cause of the blast was deliberate, says the BBC's Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia.

 

State radio said the dead included two sailors from the Cyprus navy, two soldiers and five firefighters.

Power cuts

 

Two containers of explosive stored in the munitions dump at the Evangelos Florakis naval base caught fire, a police spokesman told the semi-official CNA news agency.

 

In all, there were 98 containers in the depot.

 

They had been seized from a Cypriot-flagged ship, the Monchegorsk, which was intercepted travelling from Iran in January 2009.

 

Cyprus said the shipment violated UN sanctions against Iran.

 

The fire spread to the nearby Vassilikou power station, knocking out the electricity supply to many homes and businesses.

 

The fire has also had a knock-on effect on the BBC's broadcasts to the eastern Mediterranean. Six of the eight transmitters in the BBC's relay station at Zygi are without power, interrupting direct English-language broadcasts to the Middle East.

'Total mess'

 

The blast was "rather like a sonic boom", eyewitness Hermes Solomon told the BBC. He was staying in a caravan on a campsite not far from the base.

 

"The doors crashed together, the glass blew in - windows, door frames, things left their shelves. It was a total mess inside, as though a bomb had hit the place."

 

State television said the blasts caused extensive damage to property in the area and sparked wildfires in nearby scrubland in the tinder-dry summer conditions.

 

President Dimitris Christofias, who visited the naval base after the blast, described the scene as "a catastrophe of biblical proportions", the Associated Press (AP) reported.

 

"We were devastated by this event, not so much by the material damage, but by the loss of human lives and the injury of many of our compatriots," he said, according to AP.

 

"It was huge. I fell out of bed and ran to check on the kids," nearby resident Eleni Toubi told Reuters.

 

Alexandra Dimitriou, who was at nearby Governor's Beach at the time of the explosion, said all the hotels in the area had their glass blown out.

 

"After the blast we walked up across the beach to make sure there were no casualties," she told the BBC. "There was a lot of panic there. Older folk thought the Turks were invading.

 

"There was shattered glass everywhere. We got in the car and left to avoid getting stuck there and on our way back to Limassol we saw road signs which had been ripped off by the force of the explosion."

 

we also heard the explosion where we live over 10/20km away..

[Emmas Friend]

Saw some pictures, and read about it in the newspaper tonight. Looked really bad, seems it was like an accident waiting to happen. They should have taken the explosives out to sea, and destroyed them ages ago.