At least nine people have been killed in an explosion Saturday at a gas station in a village in northwestern Ireland as the search for possible victims continues.
Police announced in the early afternoon that the number of people killed had risen from seven to nine. “The search for other victims continues,” he added.
8 people were hospitalized.
However, police did not comment on the source of the explosion that occurred in Creeslough on Friday afternoon.
An aerial photograph taken after the explosion shows the outpost devastated after the explosion. Two neighboring two-story dwellings collapsed.
Neighborhood resident Kieran Gallagher, whose house is about 150 meters away, said he thought of the explosion as a ‘bomb’: “I was at home when I heard the explosion. (…) It was like a bomb,” he told the BBC.
Emergency services worked all night. Debris continued to pile up this Saturday.
A team of experts from the Irish Police, Fire Brigade, Ambulance and Coast Guard Services, Northern Ireland Air Ambulance Service and the British province are working on the ground.
Letterkenny University Hospital, 24 kilometers from the gas station, was placed in an emergency and said in a statement it had treated “multiple injuries”.
damage and rubble
“Thoughts and prayers are with those who lost their lives and were injured in this devastating blast,” Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin said in a statement.
“The islanders will be hit with the same sense of shock and devastation as the people of Creeslough by this tragic loss of life,” he said, thanking the emergency service members who “worked all night in extremely traumatic conditions.”
Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue, an elected politician from the area hit by the blast, compared scenes of destruction to the Northern Ireland conflict of the second half of the 20th century.
“Scenes from the event are reminiscent of +Issues+ years ago in terms of damage and debris.”
For three decades, the conflict in Northern Ireland wrestled mostly Catholics in favor of the reunification of the island of Ireland and trade unionists, mostly Protestants, who favored keeping the province under the British crown.
This conflict killed about 3,500 people.
Located about fifty kilometers from the Northern Ireland border, Creelough has about 400 inhabitants.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the deceased, the injured, and the entire Creeslough community,” said Applegreen, owner of the crashed gas station.
source: Noticias
