(EFE).- The Cuban authorities concluded this Wednesday that it is “impossible to absolutely identify” the identity of the bone remains found in the area of the industrial fire in Matanzas.
In Press conferenceJorge González Pérez, president of the Cuban Society of Legal Medicine, pointed out that –despite the fact that a DNA test cannot be carried out due to the degree of calcination– it can be concluded that the fragments correspond to the 14 missing persons.
González Pérez made his speech shortly after having met with the relatives and friends of the disappeared –and of whom the coroner did not want to reveal their names and ages– to whom he conveyed his condolences.
In the area of the fire, considered the largest industrial disaster in the country’s history, 754 fragments were found in “14 groups of bone remains,” according to González Pérez.
The remains found were exposed to temperatures that reached 2,000 degrees Celsius, according to the expert.
Jorge González Pérez said that it can be concluded that the fragments correspond to the 14 disappeared persons
To find them, according to the account of the events, it was necessary to penetrate a layer of solid fuel that formed during the fire, which reached four tanks with a capacity of 50,000 cubic meters each.
In that same sense, he added that it is also not possible to know if each one of the 14 groups of bone remains belong to each one of the 14 disappeared separately.
To reach these conclusions, Cuba consulted the International Committee of the Red Cross and experts from European countries, but without revealing their identities.
Nor did it clarify whether there was contact with foreign universities with specialized research areas in this type of DNA recognition in burned fragments.
The forensic expert pointed out that in the country “we have all the technology for any type of identification” but not for events of “these characteristics.”
The event has a provisional balance of 2 dead and 132 injured (of which 17 remain hospitalized).
The fire caused strong explosions, with flames of several tens of meters, and a column of toxic black smoke that reached Havana, 104 kilometers away.
For his part, the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, decreed this Wednesday two days of official mourning from tomorrow Thursday in tribute to the 16 people who died in the serious industrial fire that occurred in Matanzas, state television reported.
The Cuban flag will remain hoisted at half-staff as a sign of mourning and mourning until midnight next Friday the 19th.
This afternoon, the Cuban authorities recognized that the 14 disappeared correspond to groups of bone remains found in the area of the fire.
In this way, the official death toll rose from two to a total of 16.
The Cuban flag will remain hoisted at half-staff as a sign of mourning and mourning until midnight next Friday the 19th, the day on which the funeral services will be held.
On that day, a tribute will take place at the Matanzas Firefighters Museum, between 10:00 and 17:00 local hours, a period in which “the population will be able to express their feelings of pain and solidarity before such sensitive human losses.” , according to the televised report.
He also specified that as of 6:00 p.m. the funeral procession will depart to the Pantheon of the Fallen for Defense in the Matanzas cemetery, where the “family character” exhumation ceremony will take place.
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