At least 12 people died Monday in Jordan and more than 250 others were injured after a container overturned in the port of Aqaba in the south of the country, releasing poisonous chlorine gas.
Aqaba, one of the main ports on the Red Sea, is the only seaport in the Hashemite Kingdom, through which most Jordanian imports and exports pass. Aqaba is also an important seaside resort.
“A chlorine leak occurred at 3:15 p.m. (local time) in the port of Aqaba after a container with liquid gas fell, resulting in the death of twelve people and injuring 260 Jordanians and foreigners,” said the government crisis unit in a press release.
Footage released by state television Al-Mamlaka shows a crane carrying the container, before dropping it over the boat. After the shock, a thick yellow cloud escapes instantly, while people try to flee.
AFP
According to the former director of the company responsible for managing the port, interviewed on television, some twenty containers of liquefied gas “containing a high percentage of chlorine” were to be loaded on the boat. He added that the gas being heavy, “the clouds did not move easily”.
Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh and his Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya visited the site, according to Al-Mamlaka.
Deputy chief of the Aqaba Region Ports Authority, Haj Hassan, told al-Mamlaka that a “rope moving a container containing a toxic substance broke, resulting in the fall and escape of the toxic substance”.
The city of Aqaba, located in the eponymous gulf, is a seaside resort and is located on the Israeli border, less than fifteen kilometers north of Saudi Arabia, while the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula is on the other side from the gulf, about ten kilometers away.
AFP
The injured were transferred to two public hospitals, a private hospital and a fourth field hospital, authorities said, while the beach was evacuated.
Aqaba health director Jamal Obeidat said “hospitals in Aqaba were overwhelmed and could no longer receive other injured people”, some of whom are in critical condition.
He called on the residents of Aqaba “to stay at home and close the windows as a precaution”, specifying that “the substance present in the atmosphere was very dangerous”.
In addition, the government spokesman, Fayçal al-Choubou, announced on television the formation of a commission of inquiry, headed by the Minister of the Interior.
AFP
At the same time, he called on the population not to approach the scene of the accident and announced the dispatch of medical reinforcements and equipment to this region.
Israel, linked to Jordan by a peace treaty concluded in 1994, sent its condolences to the kingdom and offered its help, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told AFP.
A spokeswoman for Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry said the Aqaba crash would not affect Israel and the resort town of Eilat, less than three miles away, due to wind direction , but rather Saudi Arabia.
AFP
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz expressed his “sincere condolences to the Kingdom of Jordan” and “promised that the services of his ministry will provide any form of assistance” requested by the Jordanians.
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, also offered his condolences.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca