ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) -- Searchers discovered 10 more bodies at a natural gas complex rocked by an explosion, raising the death toll to 23, an official said Tuesday. Seventy-four people were injured and rescuers said as many as a dozen workers were believed missing.
The cause of Monday evening's explosion in the Mediterranean port city of Skikda was still under investigation, Algeria energy minister Chakib Khelil told state radio.
Authorities feared the death toll could rise because it was not known how many people were working in the area of the blast at the time, Khelil said.
The explosion was heard miles away and started a major fire that took several hours to extinguish.
The fire was contained to the port's liquefied natural gas complex. The energy minister traveled to the city about 300 miles east of the capital, Algiers, soon after the incident. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was expected to visit Tuesday.
The energy minister said the liquefied natural gas unit, one of seven complexes at the port, was destroyed.
``We will undoubtedly have to rebuild everything,'' he told Algerian radio.
Khelil said the explosion did not damage other units or a nearby power station.
More than 12,000 people work in the port's industrial zone. Algeria, which has been struggling for more than a decade to end an Islamic insurgency, is one of the world's largest exporters of natural gas and is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
The energy minister said a plant in Arzew, on the other end of Algeria's coast, would start refining liquefied natural gas normally sent through Skikda.
