Albanian troops search for survivors after munition blast

Gerdec: Albanian troops searched through rubble on Sunday for survivors of a huge munitions blast that razed an army base and killed at least nine people.

More than 240 people were injured in the string of blasts at a base near the capital Tirana stocking obsolete munitions for destruction. Most suffered burns, concussion, broken limbs, or cuts from flying glass and shrapnel.

The blast reportedly left a ravaged landscape strewn with debris from blown-out buildings. It had made craters, some as big as 50 metres in diameter and 20 metres deep.

In the nearby village of Gerdec, several homes stood only as skeletons, the bricks around their concrete pillars shattered and the red roof tiles blown all over the hillside. The shockwave uprooted shrubs and cut olive trees down to stumps.

Denis Muka, whose family owns a local restaurant, described how 100 wedding guests were listening to a speech by the mother of the bride when the blast wave unhinged the doors and windows and sent shards of glass flying.

"We thought it was an earthquake at first," the 20-year old said, brown blotches of dry blood showing through his bandages. "All of us were thrown to the ground, my head was bleeding and I thought I wouldn't manage to get up."

Thousands of big and small artillery shells, some unexploded, littered the area. Chickens and dogs lay dead, struck by shrapnel. Three concrete bunkers, built by late Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, had been uprooted.

Prime Minister Sali Berisha visited the area and appealed for calm, reassuring the evacuated residents that rescue efforts would not stop until all the missing had been accounted for. "We have started a search and rescue operation," Berisha said. "I promise you we'll do our best."

The initial blasts were so powerful they were felt as tremors in the capital Tirana, some 20 kilometres away. Small cracking explosions were still going on 18 hours later.

The explosions began when workers were moving stocks of old Chinese and Soviet shells stored at the base, a central collection point for the arsenal amassed by the communist-era dictatorship.

Albania has tried for years to dismantle the obsolete stock, set as one of the conditions for joining Nato. Berisha said he believed the membership bid would not be affected by the accident.