LAGOS, nigeria — A truck carrying fuel veered off the road into a ditch, caught fire and exploded in Nigeria’s oil-rich delta Thursday, killing at least 95 people who had rushed to the scene to scoop up fuel that had spilled, an official said.
At least 50 others were injured in the incident in the southern Niger Delta region, said Rivers State spokeswoman Ibim Semenitari.
Witnesses said some charred corpses were lying in the area hours after the explosion, including bodies the size of children.
“What did these small ones know about coming to scoop fuel?” said Alagoa Morris, coordinator at advocacy group Oil Watch Nigeria.
He said some women wailed at the scene of the explosion, looking for their relatives. The location of some of the bodies suggested that they were trying to run away when fire consumed them, Morris added.
“How can people who have enough to eat scoop oil that belongs to someone else?” Morris said. “It is poverty.”
The fuel truck was trying to avoid a head-on collision with buses when it swerved into the ditch Thursday morning, said Rivers State police spokesman Ben Ugwuegbulam. It then overturned, leaving its fuel to spill, and people immediately swarmed to the scene to collect some of it.
Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for the West African country’s emergency- management agency, said the 95 people were killed in the explosion that ensued. It was not immediately clear what had caused the fire that left the truck burned to ashes.
Most people living in the Niger Delta remain desperately poor and mostly without access to proper medical care, education or work.
Anger over the situation on several occasions has driven young people to attack foreign oil firms based there and steal fuel from pipelines.
