Tripoli, 2 December:
An explosion in a firework’s store in . . .[restrict]Tripoli’s Shara Rashid late on Saturday morning led to the street being closed and traffic gridlocked for a couple of hours in neighbouring Shara Omar Mukhtar. Despite earlier reports that two people were injured, no one was hurt in the blast.
Exact details of what happened took some time to establish. Officials from the Supreme Security Committee and the Interior Ministry later in the day both admitted the report and denied it. One told the Libya Herald that there has been an explosion and that two people had been injured, another said that no one had been hurt and a third denied that ther had been any explosion at all.
Many of the old Italian buildings in and around Shara Rashid are used as stores for the market stall in the area. Several are used to store fireworks.
The explosion has been attributed to an electrical short circuit which caused a fire, setting off an explosion. Some neighbouring stores were also destroyed as a result of the fire.
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