Oil tanker explosion kills 99 in Sierra Leone capital

Gulf Today Report

At least 99 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the capital of Sierra Leone late on Friday after large crowds gathered to collect leaking fuel, officials and witnesses said on Saturday.

Emergency crews worked to clear the scene on Saturday in Freetown's eastern suburb of Wellington where a burnt body and the blackened shells of cars and motorbikes blocked the road following the crash.

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The explosion took place late on Friday when the tanker collided with another truck as it was pulling into a gas station near a busy intersection in Wellington, just east of the capital of Freetown, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

This photo shows the tanker after explosion as a truck in Freetown, Sierra Leone struck it.

The wounded were treated in hospitals and clinics across the capital, deputy health minister Amara Jambai told Reuters.

Hospital officials called in as many doctors and nurses as they could overnight to tend to the wounded. The country's health care sector is still recovering from the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic, which killed many of the West African nation's doctors and nurses.

Victims included people who had flocked to collect fuel leaking from the ruptured vehicle, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of the port city, said in a post on Facebook, although that post was later edited to remove the reference.

"We've got so many casualties, burnt corpses," said Brima Bureh Sesay, head of the National Disaster Management Agency, in a video from the scene shared online. "It's a terrible, terrible accident."

This video frame shows firefighters working to put out a fire in Freetown, Sierra Leone. AFP

President Julius Maada Bio, who was in Scotland attending the UN climate talks Saturday, deplored the "horrendous loss of life.”

"My profound sympathies with families who have lost loved ones and those who have been maimed as a result,” he tweeted.

Vice President Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh visited two hospitals overnight and said Sierra Leone’s National Disaster Management Agency and others would "work tirelessly” in the wake of the emergency.

"We are all deeply saddened by this national tragedy,” he said on his Facebook page.