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The Nigerian Red Cross said on Sunday 105 people were killed in a petrol pipeline explosion in southeast Nigeria, but that it expected the toll to rise given the number of injured with serious burns.
“The last report we received put the toll at 105, that is bodies that were actually counted,” Nigerian Red Cross president Emmanuel Ijewere told Reuters.
“We are still collating casualty figures and we have reason to believe that the toll could be much higher given the level of burns suffered by most of the people taken to hospitals for treatment,” Ijewere said.
Witnesses said on Saturday over 100 villagers scavenging for fuel were roasted alive after an oil pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded on Thursday at Onicha Amiyi-Uhu, 50 km (35 miles) north of Umuahia.
Hospital officials in Umuahia, capital of Abia state, said they were overwhelmed by the flood of burns victims, adding some had died before they could be helped.
Oil pipeline fires accidentally started by fuel thieves have killed hundreds of villagers in the past four years in Nigeria, the world’s eighth biggest crude oil exporter.
Local officials said last week’s explosion was triggered by a spark from a motorcycle whose rider was transporting petrol from the punctured pipeline, owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp (NNPC).
Ijewere said NNPC fire crews brought in from the oil city of Port Harcourt had managed to tame the blaze on Saturday.
Villagers using buckets and jerry cans had been scooping kerosene from the pipeline since it was vandalised some two months before the accident on Thursday, witnesses said.
Although OPEC member Nigeria, is Africa’s biggest crude oil producer, it suffers chronic fuel shortages because of technical problems with its four domestic refineries.
A thriving black market in petrol is a major incentive to fuel thieves tapping into the 5,000-km (3,125 miles) network of pipelines transporting refined products across the vast country.
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