At least 28 people were killed and 79 injured early Sunday when a fuel tank exploded in north Lebanon, medical and security sources said.

Security sources said that the Army had seized a fuel storage tank hidden by black marketeers and was in the midst of handing out gasoline to residents when the explosion took place in Al-Tleil village, in the Akkar region that is one of Lebanon's poorest areas.

About 200 people were nearby at the time of the explosion.

Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hasan said the worst cases of burns probably needed quick treatment abroad to save their lives.

"We need urgent help to evacuate some of the injured abroad .. .there are cases (of burns) that are more than the ability of Lebanese hospitals to handle," he told Reuters.

Army and security forces personnel were among the casualties, the Army said in its statement, adding that it was investigating the blast.

Abdel-Rahman, whose face and body was covered in gauze as he laid in Tripoli's Al-Salam hospital, was one of those in line to get gasoline.

"There were hundreds gathered there, right next to the tank, and God only knows what happened to them," he said.

The father of another casualty at the hospital said he had two other sons he still hadn't located.

The Red Cross said its teams were still searching the explosion site.

Angry residents in Akkar gathered at the site and set fire to two dump trucks

Some of the injured were sent to hospitals in nearby Tripoli, while others were sent to Beirut. The majority of the injured are in serious condition.

Yassine Metlej, an employee at an Akkar hospital, said that the facility had received at least seven corpses and dozens of burn victims.

"The corpses are so charred that we can't identify them," he told AFP.

"Some have lost their faces, others their arms."

He said the hospital had to turn away most of the wounded because it is unable to treat severe burns.

An employee at another nearby hospital who asked to be identified only as Mohammad said that more than 30 wounded people had flocked to the facility.

Caretaker Health Minister Hasan urged hospitals across the north and in Beirut to receive some of the injured.

"They all have burns," he said, adding that they were turned away because the hospitals aren't equipped to treat such cases.

Others found care 25 kilometres away (16 miles) at the Al-Salam hospital in the northern city of Tripoli, the only facility in the region able to handle burn patients.

"The Akkar massacre is no different from the port massacre," said former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri on Twitter, referencing an explosion at Beirut's port one year ago, and calling on Lebanese officials including the president to take responsibility and resign.

"We are fed up. The lives of the Lebanese and their security is the top priority," he added.

President Michel Aoun wrote on Twitter that "this tragedy that befell our dear Akkar has made the hearts of all Lebanese bleed".

He said he had asked the judiciary to investigate the circumstances that led to the explosion.

Security forces fired tear gas to disperse the dozens of protesters outside the residency of Prime Minister designate Najib Mikati, witnesses said.

"Although I understand the cries of people and their right to protest, what happened... is not a peaceful protest but unacceptable vandalism," Mikati said in a statement.

Over the past week, several fuel tankers have been hijacked by villagers and residents of towns angered by severe fuel shortages that have meant long power blackouts and long queues at petrol stations. Claiming that the seized trucks were smuggling fuel, residents emptied some in the tanks of local power generators or makeshift storage facilities.

The Akkar explosion comes less than two weeks after Lebanon marked the first anniversary of a blast at the Beirut port last summer that killed more than 200 people.

On Aug. 4, 2020, a haphazardly stored stock of ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded and left swaths of the capital looking like a war zone.

It was one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions.

In the year since, no officials have been held to account for that blast.