* Public angry at power cuts, storage arrangements *
Cyprus President Demetris Christofias, facing public fury over a munitions blast that killed 13 people and caused a power crisis, apologised on Friday and said the inquiry would scrutinise his own role.
Presenting the most critical challenge in his three-year administration, Cypriots took to the streets in unprecedented protests over Monday's huge explosion of confiscated munitions that knocked out the Vassiliko power station and wiped out 53% of the island’s electricity.
"The apologies of the government and of the president for what happened must be taken as a given, and are a given," Christofias told journalists in an apology which many believe should have come earlier.
Attorney General Petros Clerides has ordered a criminal inquiry into the blast and appointed leading lawyer Polys Polyviou as an independent investigator.
The munitions, confiscated by Cyprus from a ship sailing from Iran to Syria in 2009 for violating U.N. sanctions, were stored in high temperatures in an open field next to Vassilikos.
They exploded in a 1.5 megaton blast on July 11, killing the island's navy chief, military personnel and fire-fighters and the defence minister and army chief resigned. Initially, the victims numbered 12, but a soldier suffering from sever burns died on Friday.
WARNINGS
Christofias has said that he was unaware of deteriorating storage conditions of the munitions, even though army officials where the cargo was stored had repeatedly appealed for their removal. Foreign minister Markos Kyprianou is widely expected to become a scapegoat for the disaster exerting greater pressure to the junior coalition partner, the Democratic Party (DIKO) to leave government.
In all, 98 shipping containers had been packed with munitions, but no detailed breakdown of the arms cache has been made public. Some press reports suggested the containers also included low-grade nuclear ammunitions.
Thousands of people have staged almost daily protests over the blast, calling for the resignation of Christofias's left-wing government. More protests were planned for Friday in central Nicosia.
His failure to apologise in an address on Thursday stirred further an angry public now having to cope with rolling power cuts which have significantly disrupted business, with the cost to Cyprus's 17.4 bln euro economy yet to be assessed.
The Financial Mirror estimated that the final cost to the economy, including restoring the Vassiliko power plant, could each 1 bln euros.
