JORDAN: At least 13 people were killed and some 250 sickened when a crane loading gas tanks onto a ship in Jordan dropped one of them, sending plumes of toxic yellow smoke into the air.
A video posted by state media, apparently captured by closed-circuit television cameras at the scene, showed the storage tank slipping from a hoist as it was lowered toward the deck of a ship at the port of Aqaba and exploding, engulfing the area in toxic clouds.
Dock workers were pictured fleeing the area on foot. A truck carrying a second gas tank had been slowly reversing toward the ship moments before the explosion, and quickly altered its course to escape the yellow gas clouds.
According to authorities, the tank contained chlorine, a poisonous gas that can be pressurized and cooled to change it into a liquid so it can be shipped and stored. Chlorine is widely used in household products such as bleach, for waste sanitation, and in drinking water and pool water to kill harmful bacteria. Aqaba port, at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba off the Red Sea, near the border with Israel, is Jordan’s only seaport.
– THE BANGKOK POST