KUWAIT CITY Twelve students and their teacher were wounded in a blast that damaged a chemistry laboratory at a Kuwaiti college, newspapers reported Sunday. The blast went off at the technological studies college on Saturday as the teacher mixed alcohol with nitrous acid to produce a substance used in cleaning metals, AFP reported. "I have been doing this for the past 10 years. I don't know what went wrong.
I'll investigate the matter," said Abdullatif al-Shatti, the teacher. Shatti and two of the students were kept in hospital for treatment of burns and wounds but were in satisfactory condition, Al-Qabas said. The other 10 students were only slightly hurt.
Higher Education Minister Yussef al-Ibrahim ordered an immediate probe into the incident, while the students' union called a sit-in to press for more stringent safety measures.