INA- sources
Relatives of the missing in Cuba's capital desperately searched on Saturday for victims of an explosion at one of Havana's most luxurious hotels that killed at least 27 people. They checked the morgue, hospitals and, if unsuccessful, returned to the partially collapsed Hotel Saratoga, where rescuers used dogs to hunt for survivors.
A natural gas leak was the apparent cause of Friday's blast at Havana's 96-room Hotel Saratoga.
The 19th-century structure in the city's Old Havana neighbourhood did not have any guests at the time because it was undergoing renovations ahead of a planned Tuesday reopening after being closed for two years during the pandemic.
On Saturday evening, Dr. Julio Guerra Izquierdo, chief of hospital services at the Ministry of Health, raised the death toll to 27 with 81 people injured. The dead included four children and a pregnant woman. Spain's President Pedro Sanchez said via Twitter that a Spanish tourist was among the dead and that another Spaniard was seriously injured.
Cuban authorities confirmed the tourist's death and said her partner was injured. They were not staying at the hotel. Dalila Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the Tourism Ministry, said a Cuban-American tourist was also injured.
Representatives of Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA, which owns the hotel, said during a Saturday news conference that 51 workers had been inside the hotel at the time, as well as two people working on renovations. Of those, 11 were killed, 13 remained missing and six were hospitalized.
Gonzalez said the cause of the blast was still under investigation, but a large crane hoisted a charred gas tanker from the hotel's rubble early Saturday.
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