Bhopal gas survivors mark 25 years of agony

[n2doc]

by Staff Writers
Bhopal, India (AFP) Nov 29, 2009

Livestock outnumber humans at the Arif Nagar slum, a toxic wasteyard next to the site of the world's worst industrial accident, which occurred 25 years ago this week in the Indian city of Bhopal.

While the animals are blissfully unaware of their poisoned surroundings, residents are bitter whenever they glance behind their homes towards the old Union Carbide factory, where a lethal plume of gas escaped from a storage tank in the early hours of December 3, 1984, killing thousands instantly.

Arif Nagar and other destitute neighbourhoods around the plant became a graveyard as residents choked to death on more than 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate -- the raw material used to make the pesticide carbaryl.

"I started frothing from the mouth, my eyes were huge and red. I thought I was going to die," said Hamid Khan, 70, who watched his two children die in the disaster and whose skin and organs are racked with infections to this day.

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