Today, August 14, at 1:23 p.m., an explosion took place in the “Surmalu” shopping center. From the beginning, six combat units from the fire-rescue squads of the rescue department of the de-facto Ministry of Emergency Situations of Armenia [1] went to the scene of the incident. Later it became known that 15 more combat units left (4 and 11) in different periods.
As of now, there is 1 dead and 34 injured. As a result of the explosion, the victims were transferred to “Armenia” HBC, “Shengavit”, “Surb Astvatmayr” and “Erebuni” hospitals.
Turkologist Varuzhan Geghamyan made a post about the incident on his Facebook page. In particular, drawing comparisons with the most powerful explosion that took place in the port of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, on August 4, 2020, the latter noted: “The tragedy at the Surmalu shopping center is described in this post I made last year… When I am often asked, ‘well, what else could possibly go wrong after this?’, I often cite Syria and Lebanon as examples, where even basic security is no longer something like a dream, and the restoration of states is perhaps even an impossible reality… Since there is no state, there is nothing [2]”.
UPDATE
The number of victims has now reached 45.
The number of those transferred to medical institutions reached 51.
[1]Explosion in “Surmalu” shopping center (updated) http://mes.am/hy/accidents/item/2022/08/14/1335/(referenced on 14.08.2022).
[2]From the Facebook page of Ph.D. Turkologist Varuzhan Geghamyan https://www.facebook.com/varujeans/posts/pfbid0EDsU87nc6ouskTfiCbuQoGev26euoYY8C4Ep3E79wzVJodyMbGiFw1eaHiCQWBUjl(referenced on 14.08.2022).
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