Matanzas ( Cuba ), (AFP) - A fire that broke out Friday at an oil depot in Cuba is still out of control, while the authorities announced Monday that the fire had destroyed a third tank and threatened to engulf a fourth.

Cuban Firefighting Service official Alexandre Avalos Jorge told reporters that the four tanks, each with a capacity of 50 million liters and located in a storage base, were "compromised" as "a chain reaction took place".

The disaster began on Friday evening when a lightning strike hit one of the eight tanks in the warehouse located in Matanzas, 100 km east of Havana, which contained 26,000 cubic meters of crude oil, or about 50% of its maximum capacity.

The fire spread to a second tank containing 52,000 cubic meters of diesel fuel.

The second tank exploded at midnight on Sunday, despite the movement of the firefighting and assistance teams, forcing the firefighters to evacuate the site.

"What we feared happened," said the governor of the Matanzas region, Mario Sabines, Monday, in a video clip posted by the Cuban presidency's account on Twitter, referring to the fire and destruction of a third tank containing crude oil, before the fire spread to a fourth tank.

He pointed out that the situation is "very complicated" and the fire area is "very large."

He noted that rescue "teams" from Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela were moving in to spread the firefighting foam, which "may take some time".

According to the latest toll, a firefighter died, and the number of missing persons decreased from 16 to 14, while 22 people are still in hospital, five of whom are in critical condition.

Relatives of the missing met Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and received help from doctors and psychiatrists.

"My son did his duty and left," the mother of a 19-year-old firefighter who was in the depot Saturday morning when the first tank exploded told AFP.

On Sunday, four planes from Mexico and Venezuela landed at the airport in the coastal resort of Varadero, 40 km east of the city of Matanzas.