[IsraelTimes] Authorities say blaze was doused within 40 minutes, with no casualties; all 14 crew evacuated in time; police say excessive heat might have been factor.
Dubai authorities on Thursday were investigating a kaboom on a container ship carrying flammable materials which unleashed a fireball at one of the world’s busiest ports and sent shock waves through the city.
Firefighters rushed to the scene at Jebel Ali Port to tackle the blaze that broke out shortly before midnight on the large vessel, which authorities said had been preparing to dock.
Police said that the summer heat, already hovering above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Gulf city, may have been a factor.
Dubai police said three of the 130 containers on the ship held flammable materials.
"Initial reports indicate that... friction, or heat, may have led to the blast," Dubai police chief Abdullah al-Marri told al-Arabiya, adding that there were no radioactive substances or explosives in the containers.
Such events are a rarity in the ultra-secure Gulf emirate, one of seven which make up the wealthy United Arab Emirates.
There are 8,000 companies based in the Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA) which contributed 23% of Dubai’s gross domestic product last year. It is the Middle East’s largest trade zone.
The glitzy Gulf emirate of Dubai transformed itself over the past 50 years from a sleepy port town to a regional travel, trade and financial services center. The city state is now home to more than three million people, mostly foreigners, compared with only 15,000 inhabitants in the 1950s.
Unlike Abu Dhabi, the leading member of the UAE that sits on large fossil fuel reserves, Dubai has dwindling oil resources and has worked to develop non-oil industries, becoming a hub for services and tourism for the region.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
