Saturday noon, we were sitting outside with an Albanian friend and we heard the distant boom and felt the concussion, but did not give it much of a thought, just figured it was some construction work. About 30 minutes later we start getting phone calls from Peace Corps asking if we were ok, they had heard there was a bad accident near Durres. We turned on the TV and saw the accident was at a munitions depot, about 20 miles east of Durres in the village of Gerdec. While destroying old munitions there was a accident which set off a series of explosions. There are 12 confirmed dead, 200+ injured, but they have not been able to search the plant remains yet. Rumorss have the company overseeing the destruction of the munitions being an American firm, but it seems the American companies finished their contract in December, 2007. At this time, not much is known.

Here is the YouTube edited footage. In the original footage, the camera-person was knocked down by the concussion and that has been edited out of this take. At the end, there are links to additional footage of the area and the destruction.

and here is the original footage……