At least 20 people were killed when a truck carrying fuel exploded in Lebanon’s northern region of Akkar, the Red Cross said on Sunday.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.
“Our teams have transported 20 dead bodies and more than 7 injured from the fuel tanker explosion in Akkar to hospitals in the area,” the Lebanese Red Cross said on Twitter.
Videos shared on social media showed a large fire at the blast site. Agence France-Presse could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.
Lebanon, hit by what the World Bank calls one of the worst economic crises the world has seen since the 1850s, has been grappling with soaring poverty and shortages of basic items such as medicine and fuel.
The Lebanese army on Saturday said it had seized thousands of litres of gasoline and diesel that distributors were stockpiling in pumps across the country, and the past week has seen multiple incidents of tankers being hijacked.
Hospitals have warned that they are low on fuel and may be forced to shut down, while many people have just two hours of electricity a day.
The Akkar explosion comes less than two weeks after Lebanon marked the first anniversary of a blast at the Beirut port last summer that killed more than 200 people.
On August 4, 2020, a haphazardly stored stock of ammonium nitrate fertiliser exploded and left swathes of the capital looking like a war zone.
It was one of history’s largest non-nuclear explosions.
In the year since, no officials have been held to account for that blast.
“The Akkar massacre is no different from the port massacre,” said former prime minister Saad al-Hariri on Twitter, calling on Lebanese officials including the president to take responsibility and resign.
Hariri is the leading Sunni Muslim politician, the dominant religion in Lebanon’s north, and has been in open opposition to Lebanese president Michel Aoun.
Gebran Bassil, who heads the party founded by Aoun, wrote on Twitter that “our hearts are with families in Altalil and Akkar tonight.”