AHMADI, KUWAIT // A gas explosion killed three men and injured several more when it ripped through a Shia prayer hall and reduced its library to rubble on Sunday in south Kuwait. Four men were in the room when it was destroyed by the blast at about 6.30pm. A rescue team found an injured man five hours later, and a second an hour after that. Two bodies were recovered from the wreckage yesterday morning. The search was ended about 6am yesterday.
Khamis Asharkwi and a friend, both from Kuwait, met with two South Asian men to discuss business when one lit a cigarette. Mr Asharkwi said the flame probably ignited gas leaking from a pipe running through the room. "The entire library became like a fire," he said, "but we didn't smell any gas." He only had time to try to protect his face from the flames with a scarf before the room collapsed. The library's books, walls and then ceiling slammed into his back, pinning him to the table in front. "I tried to remove the stones from around my head," Mr Asharkwi said, "then I used my mobile" to notify the fire brigade of their position in the hall.
Mr Asharkwi said his training in the navy had prepared him for disasters. When the firemen arrived, he banged a rock on the table to relay his exact position. With adrenalin pumping, Mr Asharkwi did not feel anything at the time. When he finally reached the hospital, the pain of the burns was taking its toll, but he was happy to be alive. "When I feel pain, I think about the people in Gaza - how they feel," he said. "I take power from them."
Both South Asian men in the meeting died, but the carnage was not limited to the library. One man outside the room died and others were injured. The security guard, Bashear Sultan, was standing in the hall when he heard a "huge sound". "I was thrown away from where I was standing," he said. "I saw everything falling down." Many people ran to the scene of the blast and began shouting to try to locate the buried men. The building was not crowded at the time. Most people come after 7pm to listen to readings and advice from the sheikh, Mr Sultan said.
"We miss them," he said about the victims, "especially Kashif. He served tea, and was a very co-operative guy". "They were burned on their faces and their arms. One of them was critical and died of a severe haemorrhage to the brain," said Brig Ameen Abdeen, the acting director of the Kuwaiti fire department, who was present at the prayer hall on Sunday. "The dead bodies are non-Kuwaiti; I think they might be Indian or Sri Lankan," he said.
Sheikh Jaber al Sabah, the minister of the interior, arrived at the husseiniya soon after the explosion. He quickly reassured the reporters that the explosion was not a terrorist act. "It's a gas explosion," he said. "We took them from under the rubble. I spoke to two of them." The building in the city 40 kilometres to the south of the capital looked like it had been hit by an earthquake. Sniffer dogs, men with sonar technology to locate buried people and dozens of rescue workers searched tirelessly for the buried men. One blackened fireman was carried away from the rescue on a stretcher as his colleagues rushed to fit an oxygen mask over his mouth.
The fire department of Kuwait Oil Co took control of the rescue because the building falls within its jurisdiction. The headquarters of KOC is nearby. The tree-lined streets of Ahmadi are different from the dusty concrete roads in the rest of the country. The city was built by the oil company in the 1940s to house its large English workforce. Many British citizens still live there and it is home to Kuwait's largest rugby club, the Kuwait Nomads.
Brig Abdeen said the design of the city's gas network is exceptional in Kuwait. "The gas system is the only one in Kuwait where the gas arrives directly from the company to the houses - not by cylinders. It's not like other houses where you bring your bottles to cook." jcalderwood@thenational.ae
