An explosion at the Ras Laffan industrial zone in Qatar on Sunday evening left 54 people injured and 18 others missing, according to Qatar’s Interior Ministry. The ministry said the blast at a plant in the LNG hub was caused by a “technical incident” and that search operations were underway for the missing. It did not say how serious the injuries were.
In a statement, Qatari authorities said an internal explosion occurred at one of the facilities in Ras Laffan because of a technical accident. A later statement said the event stemmed from a technical malfunction and caused injuries but no leak that would threaten public safety.
An AFP reporter about 20 kilometers south of Ras Laffan, on Qatar’s northern coast, saw flames lighting the sky and a plume of smoke. QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy company, said an operational incident occurred during the startup of activity in Ras Laffan industrial city, triggering an explosion and fire at the Barzan plant.
The authorities stressed that the Sunday blast was the result of a technical fault. They also noted that the Ras Laffan facility had previously been badly damaged in Iranian attacks carried out in response to US-Israeli strikes. Those Iranian attacks during the wider conflict on Gulf infrastructure, including Ras Laffan, led Qatar to suspend LNG production. Energy Minister Saad bin Sherida Al-Kaabi later said damage from the March 18 strikes cut Qatar’s LNG export capacity by 17 percent and that repairs would take three to five years.
