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FREETOWN — Not less than 99 folks had been killed and greater than 100 injured within the capital of Sierra Leone late on Friday when a gas tanker exploded following a collision, native authorities stated.
Emergency crews labored to clear the scene on Saturday in Freetown’s japanese suburb of Wellington the place a burnt physique and the blackened shells of vehicles and motorbikes blocked the highway following the crash, a Reuters reporter stated.
The wounded had been handled in hospitals and clinics throughout the capital, deputy well being minister Amara Jambai informed Reuters.
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Victims included individuals who had flocked to gather gas leaking from the ruptured car, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of the port metropolis, stated in a put up on Fb, though that put up was later edited to take away the reference.
“We’ve acquired so many casualties, burnt corpses,” stated Brima Bureh Sesay, head of the Nationwide Catastrophe Administration Company, in a video from the scene shared on-line. “It’s a horrible, horrible accident.”
Movies shared on-line shortly after the explosion confirmed folks operating via clouds of thick smoke as massive fires lit up the night time sky. Reuters was not in a position instantly to confirm the pictures, however witnesses described the horror.
“We’re all in shock. A girl I had simply purchased bread from died. A beautiful lady. I can’t recover from this grief,” stated Abdul Kabia, crying on the crash web site surrounded by mangled automobiles.
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HOSPITAL OVERWHELMED
The crash offered a significant problem for Freetown’s well being service already creaking from years of underfunding. The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic gutted the nation’s ranks of medical employees, 250 of whom died, and the system has not recovered.
Connaught Hospital was overwhelmed with the inflow of sufferers, so a number of the injured had been moved to different places, together with a navy hospital, stated Swaray Lengor, a program supervisor on the Worldwide Federation of Pink Cross and Pink Crescent Societies.
“The state of affairs on the hospital, particularly Connaught hospital … is overwhelming. Insufficient medical consumables and mattress capability,” Lengor informed Reuters by textual content message. “NGO companions had been requested to help with gear, medical commodities and meals.”
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The demise toll would possible rise, he stated.
The World Well being Group stated it will ship provides and deploy specialists in burn accidents.
“We’ll present extra help as wanted at this horrible time for the folks of Sierra Leone,” it stated on Twitter.
Accidents with tanker vans in Sub-Saharan Africa have beforehand killed scores of people that gathered on the web site to gather spilled gas and had been hit by secondary blasts.
In 2019, a tanker explosion in Tanzania killed 85 folks, whereas round 50 folks had been killed in an analogous catastrophe in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
“My profound sympathies with households who’ve misplaced family members and people who have been maimed consequently,” President Julius Maada Bio tweeted. “My authorities will do the whole lot to help affected households.”
(Reporting by Umaru Fofana in Freetown; Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; and Edward McAllister in Dakar Writing by Bhargav Acharya and Alessandra Prentice Enhancing by Frances Kerry, Giles Elgood and Edmund Blair)
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