Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha declared Tuesday a day of national mourning for the victims of the weekend army depot blast.
One minute of silence was observed at noon throughout the country, and flags on public buildings were flown at half mast.
Authorities said 17 bodies have been found so far, two of them on Tuesday, near the 50-meter crater left over by the explosions.
The explosions occurred on Saturday when military experts were dismantling old shells at an army depot near Vora, about 15 kilometers west of capital city of Tirana.
The expolsions have killed at least 17 people, injuring nearly another 300. And more than 2,000 homes within a 4-kilometer radius of ground zero had been damaged, 318 of them were completely destroyed.
Albania has some 100,000 tons of old ordnance it inherited from the past. It is dismantling those weapons, hoping this might help the poverty-stricken country get the ticket to a NATO membership at the alliance's April 2-4 summit in Bucharest, Romania.
Source:Xinhua
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