GADANI: At least 11 workers lost their lives and over 50 others got trapped, possibly fatally, at an oil tanker on Tuesday after a large fire broke out at the vessel brought for dismantling to the well-known ship-breaking yard here.

According to sources, the vessel had not fully been drained of oil when the dismantling work was undertaken. As a result, an explosion ripped through the oil tanker at about 9am.

Due to the absence of the required facilities in Gadani, rescue work began af ter 3am.

And the fire was burning uncontrollably well into the evening.Akram Nasir, chief officer of the Gadani Municipal Committee, said that some of the bodies were recovered from the water and some quite far from the vessel, near a village.

He said that because there was only one fire tender in Gadani, they had to call for more from Winder/Sonmiani, the Lasbela Industrial Estate Development Authority, KPT and Hubco.

`At least 24 men were working inside the ship`s tank when it exploded. Many others were working in different portions of the vessel. Some jumped into the water and were rescued. Some 45 were saved in this way,` he said.

`But there are many more trapped inside.

Some workers are saying there may be more than 50 who are still trapped.

Others are giving us numbers in the hundreds.

`There is no way of knowing exactly how many are still trapped, until the fire is extinguished. And that cannot happen until the oil inside the oil tanlcer burns out completely,` he said as he asl(ed someone on the phone to provide him with a generator and some pumps.

`There is no electricity in Gadani. How are we to carry out the rescue work?` Two helicopters one circling overhead in case someone was to be fetched from the water and the other to sprinkle dry chemical powder, or DCP, from above were pressed into service.

Describing the difficulties being faced in the rescue effort, Mohammad Qasim, the head fireman from Hubco, said the chemical dropped from the helicopter was not proving to be very effective because the helicopter was flying too high over the burning ship.

`It can`t risk flying any lower as there is too much smoke. Besides, pieces ofmetal shoot out with each new explosion inside the vessel. We can`t even get near the fire yet. We are only assessing the situation from afar,` he said.

Plight of workers `The fire started at 9am and rescue work began at 3.30pm. This is the state of affairs here. Do you think the workers trapped inside would still be alive after inhaling so much smoke and toxic gases?` Nasir A. Mansoor, deputy general secretary of the National Trade Union Federation, said as he watched the fire burn uncontrollably.

`The army and navy have been volunteering here but the owner of the yard number 54, to which the vessel was brought for dismantling, Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor Kamboh, is yet to show his face. Actually, none of the businessmen who own these yards are here today,` he told Dawn.

`This is not the graveyard of ships; Gadani is the graveyard of workers! Today so many died and so many were injured. That made the mediapay attention. One or two men die due to the hopeless working conditions here every other day and no one cares,` said Amanullah, a worker who hails from Swat.

Abdul Khalig from Haripur said that there was no water, no power, no bathrooms and no place to live for the labourers in Gadani. `We use the broken pieces of wood from the ships to make huts for ourselves. For water we have dug wells. The water is sour but it keeps us alive while we earn a living here, he said.

The injured `We started working on the ship only two days ago. We had orders to hurry up with the work. There was still six feet of oil in the tanker when the cutting began yesterday.

Due to the oil below, hot gases got accumulated inside and a hot burning piece of metal just turned the whole ship into a bomb,` Sanaullah, an injured worker, told Dawn at the Civil Hospital`s Burns Unit in Karachi.

`The explosion broke the hull from the rest of the vessel and the workers engagedin cutting work on the upper side just flew out. Some, like me, were recovered from the sea,` he said.

An attendant with another injured worker said he had arrived in Gadani from Pal(pattan in the morning, only to learn that there was a huge fire in the ship-breaking yard and his son, Mumtaz, was engulfed by it.

`They managed to pull him out, thank God. My son became a father only a few days ago. I work as a fruit seller back home but came to work in his place here so that he could go home for a few days.

`He earns Rs800 a day here. I didn`t want him to lose out on that income,` said Mohammad Yasin, the father.

One of the two young nurses standing quietly nearby got teary-eyed and turned away. `We only have one patient with 60 per cent burns here. As for these two men you just spoke to, they have 100pc burns. They are not expected to live,` she said.

Our correspondents in Quetta and Khuzdar contributed to this report