HERAT, Afghanistan (AP) – Investigators began to search the ruins of a large fire that destroyed hundreds of tankers parked at a large intersection on the Afghanistan-Iran border, said the governor of Herat province in Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Satellite photos of the Islam Qala customs terminal and surroundings analyzed by The Associated Press show the devastation caused by a fire that started on Saturday when a fuel tank exploded. The flames roared out of control for almost three days.
The cause of the explosion and the ensuing fire were still undetermined on Tuesday.
Satellite images from Planet Labs Inc. obtained by the AP show the burnt projectiles from hundreds of fuel and natural gas tanks on the Afghan side of the border. Typically, hundreds of tankers line up as they pass between the two countries.
At least 20 people were injured when the explosion set off a huge fire that engulfed many of the hundreds of trucks crossing the border. Authorities say there were about 2,500 trucks there at the time of the fire. The customs retention area was designed to accommodate no more than 700 tankers at a time, but routinely hundreds of other people flock to the area.
A trucker strike in protest at the government’s tax hike was in its second week at the time of the fire and was the reason for the extraordinary number of tank trucks parked at the intersection, said Younus Qazizada, president of the Herat Chamber of Commerce.
Herat firefighters with limited capacity said the fire was out of control almost from the first moments.
The satellite images show a mass of burnt trucks, the ground around them singed. The fire reached an area of just under half a square kilometer (a fifth of a square mile). More trucks lined up after the fire and other cars and people appeared to be gathered at the scene on Tuesday.
The crossing, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of the city of Herat, the provincial capital, is an important transit route between Afghanistan and Iran.
The United States allows Afghanistan to import fuel and oil from Iran as part of a special concession that exempts Kabul from American sanctions against Iran.
A third image from December 8, 2020 shows an intact Islam Qala port.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.