HAVANA: The death toll after an explosion ripped through a luxury hotel in central Havana climbed to 25 people including a Spanish tourist, state television reported on Saturday, one day after the powerful blast due to a suspected gas leak.
Rescuers were still combing through what remained of the prestigious Saratoga Hotel looking for survivors. On Friday, officials had said up to 50 people were wounded in the blast.
“Tragic news has reached us from Cuba. A Spanish tourist has died and another Spanish citizen is seriously injured after the explosion at the Saratoga Hotel,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Twitter.
“All our love to their families and those of all the victims and injured. Our support also to the Cuban people,” he added.
The search is now focusing on the interior of the hotel and the basement, the television station said.
“It is very regrettable what happened, the destruction, especially the loss of life, and also the people injured, but once again I want to highlight the speed with which the population and institutions mobilised,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel tweeted.
“Solidarity has prevailed. #FuerzaCuba,” he added, alluding to the many Cubans who rushed on Friday to donate blood to help the wounded.
The first four floors of the establishment, which were closed to guests while being renovated, were gutted in the late-morning blast that sent a cloud of dust and smoke billowing into the air on Friday.
The explosion also tore off large parts of the facade, blew out windows and destroyed cars parked outside the five-star hotel, which has in the past hosted celebrities such as Madonna, Beyonce, Mick Jagger and Rihanna.
The dome of a nearby Baptist church also collapsed.
Inside the hotel at the time were employees preparing for its post-refurbishment reopening, which had been scheduled for next Tuesday.
Roberto Calzadilla of state company Gaviota, which owns the hotel, said the explosion happened while a gas tank was being refilled.
"It was neither a bomb nor an attack, it was an unfortunate accident," said Diaz-Canel, who arrived at the scene an hour after the blast accompanied by the prime minister and National Assembly president.
Cuba was hit by a wave of anti-communist bombing attacks on hotels in 1997, in which an Italian tourist was killed and six people were injured.
Ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene on Friday and police cordoned off the area, dispersing people who swarmed to the hotel near Havana’s emblematic National Capitol Building, which housed Congress prior to the Cuban revolution.
The hotel is also next to a school, but no pupils were injured, according to the presidency.
Rogelio Garcia, a bicycle taxi driver who was passing by the hotel at the time of the blast recounted that "we felt a huge explosion and (saw) a cloud of dust... many people ran out."
"There was a terrible explosion, and everything collapsed," said a woman, her face covered in dust, who declined to give her name.
"The United States sends heartfelt condolences to all of those affected by the tragic explosion this morning," said US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Twitter.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, meanwhile, said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would not cancel a trip to Cuba planned for Sunday.
Condolences additionally poured in from Bolivia, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Nicolas Maduro, the president of close Cuban ally Venezuela, who said that "the Cuban people have the solidarity and support of all the peoples of the world" and especially Venezuelans.
The upmarket Saratoga Hotel has 96 rooms, two bars, two restaurants, a spa and a gym. It was built in 1880 to house shops and converted into a hotel in 1933.
