HAVANA (AP) – Dog search crews on Sunday chased the ruins of a luxury hotel in the Cuban capital for survivors of a devastating explosion as authorities increased the number of known dead to 30.
The Saratoga, a 96-star five-star hotel in Old Havana, was preparing to reopen after closing for two years when a seeming gas leak ignited, blowing up exterior walls in the busy morning streets just a block from the Capitol. On the side. building on friday.
Cuban authorities on Sunday increased the death toll to 30 of 27, although crews continued to search for victims buried under piles of crushed concrete. Several nearby structures were also damaged, including the historic Marty Theater and the Golgotha Baptist Church, the seat of the denomination in western Cuba.
The church said on its Facebook page that the building had “suffered significant structural damage, with several collapsed or cracked walls and columns (and) the ceiling partially collapsed”, although no church employees were injured.
The health ministry said 84 people were injured in Friday’s blast. Among the dead were four minors, a pregnant woman and a Spanish tourist whose companion was seriously injured.
The ministry also released the names of those killed on Sunday. About 24 people remained in hospital.
On Saturday, a spokesman for Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA, which owns the hotel, said 13 of its workers were unaccounted for. Governor Reynaldo Garcia Zapata said on Saturday night that 19 families had reported missing loved ones and that rescue efforts would continue.
Authorities say the cause of the blast is still under investigation, but believe it was caused by a gas leak. A large crane pulled a charred gas tanker from the rubble on Saturday.
Burials of victims have begun, municipal officials said. But some were still waiting for news of missing friends and relatives.
“We hope to know something about my cousin’s mother,” Angela Acosta told the Associated Press near the site of the blast. Her cousin Maria de la Concepcion Allard lived in an apartment next to the hotel with a black Labrador who was rescued with another dog on Sunday.
Teams worked to clean the streets around the hotel, and by late Saturday, significant pedestrian traffic had resumed.
“There are mothers who are without their children today,” said Mata Verde, a manicurist who walked near Saratoga on Sunday when Cuba celebrated Mother’s Day. She said she was telling women who lost their sons or daughters in the blast that “they must move forward”.
The blast added to the problems of an important tourism industry that was suffocated by the coronavirus pandemic, as well as tense sanctions imposed by former US President Donald Trump and kept the Biden administration afloat. These limited visits by American tourists to the islands and limited remittances from Cubans in the United States to their families in Cuba.
Tourism began to revive a little earlier this year, but the war in Ukraine reduced the boom in Russian visitors, who accounted for nearly a third of tourists who arrived in Cuba last year.
Saratoga, which was closed during the pandemic, was one of Havana’s elite quarters, often hosting visiting VIPs and celebrities.
Some attention in Cuba has begun to focus on the official visit of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who arrived on Saturday night at the end of a tour of five countries that began in Central America.
Lopez Obrador met on Sunday with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who awarded him the Order of Jose Marti “for his great achievements for humanity.” This is the most important award that the country gives to a foreigner.
Diaz-Canel’s office tweeted that Lopez Obrador had said he would urge US President Joe Biden Cuba not to be excluded from the America’s summit in Los Angeles in June.
Lopez Obrador said the trip’s goals include signing trade, health, education and co-operation agreements with the island, while ratifying its foreign policy stance.
“We do not support hegemony,” he said. “Let no one exclude anyone, because we are independent states, we are sovereign states and no one can stand above the rights of peoples and nations.
Diaz-Canel visited Mexico during his Independence Day celebrations last year. Lopez Obrador recently spoke out against the apparent intention of the US government to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the upcoming summit.
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