Cyprus attempted several times to offload a dangerous cargo of confiscated Iranian munitions before it blew up killing 12 people in the island's worst peacetime disaster, the government said on Tuesday.
Attempting to fend off growing criticism, authorities said they had tried in vain to get rid of the 98 containers of munitions they confiscated in 2009 from a ship sailing from Iran to Syria, but were rebuffed by the United Nations. Earlier, Wikileaks documents revealed the Cyprus government's hesitation to heed to U.S. and Israeli pressures to arrest teh ship and confiscate the arms cache that could have ended up in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah.
The cargo exploded on Monday, destroying the island's largest power facility that was close to a military base where the munitions were stored. The defence minister and army chief have resigned.
Police used teargas to disperse stone-throwing crowds who demonstrated outside the presidential palace in Nicosia on Tuesday night.
Just a mangled shell remains of the power facility of Vassiliko, which provided Cyprus with 53% of its energy. Rolling power and water cuts have come into effect.
Left stacked in scorching heat at a military base, one of the containers containing gunpowder had apparently expanded, letting off a "hissing noise" in the days preceding the blast, military sources said.
Warnings from navy officers to their seniors that it was a disaster about to happen went unheeded, relatives of the victims said.
Authorities ordered a criminal inquiry into the causes of the disaster.
NEGLIGENCE
Newspapers accused authorities of criminal negligence, pointing a finger of blame at Demetris Christofias, the communist president who was swept to power in 2008.
The weapons-grade material confiscated was in violation of U.N. sanctions on Iran, and therefore the United Nations had to be involved in consultations about its fate, Stefanou said.
However, it had never been discussed in cabinet meetings, Stefanou said. "The presidency was not aware of this," he said.
Two of the victims, twin 19-year-old conscripts, had been assigned to douse the stack regularly with water to keep temperatures down, their family said.
"Which idiot decided to place 98 containers of explosives in a compound … directly opposite the largest energy facility the Cyprus Republic now has?" the daily Politis asked, splashing the word "Criminals" on its front page.
