Fire rages at Cuba oil terminal -governor

Huge columns of fire rose into the sky and thick black smoke bellowed all day,

A third crude tank caught fire and collapsed at Cuba's main oil terminal in Matanzas, the province's governor said on Monday, as an oil spill spread flames from a second tank that caught firetwo days earlier in the island's biggest oil industry accident in decades, Qazet.az reports.

Huge columns of fire rose into the sky and thick black smoke bellowed all day, darkening the sky as far away as Havana. Explosions rocked the area just before midnight as one tank collapsed and again at noon as another imploded.

One firefighter has died and 16 people were missing, all from Saturday's explosion at the second storage tank. A fourth tank was threatened, but had not caught fire. Cuba relies on oil to generate much of its electricity.

Cuba had made progress fighting off the raging flames during the weekend after drawing on help from Mexico and Venezuela, but late on Sunday the fire began spreading from the second tank, which collapsed, said Mario Sabines, governor of the Matanzas province, about 130 km from Havana.