An oil platform fire resulted in 32 deaths and many more missing after the platform in the Caspian Sea caught fire during a storm off Azerbaijan.
Eighty-four trapped workers were on SOCAR's Guneshli platform when the storm caused the fire to break out Friday evening, damaging a gas line and having rescue efforts hampered with the severity of the storm. The platform partially collapsed when the storm damaged a natural gas pipeline.
"According to our information, 32 workers died, while 42 workers were rescued last night. ... The fire on the platform was finally extinguished," said Mirvari Gakhramanly, head of Azerbaijan's Oil Workers' Rights Protection Committee, according to the Times of Malta.
The Committee said that around 40 oil workers tried to escape by boarding a life raft attached to the platform, but the raft ruptured, sending several into the sea.
Three more workers went missing off another offshore oil platform in the Caspian Sea, SOCAR confirmed, BBC News reported.
President Ilham Aliyev said that a new commission has been set up to investigate the incident, with Prime Minister Artur Rasizasa as the lead chair.
The facility, which involves oil production on 28 oil wells, had to suspend all oil and gas pipelines linking the platform with the land, which were blocked as a safety precaution, according to The Huffington Post.
