At least 92 people died and several dozen more were seriously injured by the explosion of a tanker at a gas station near the Sierra Leone capital, where a large crowd had gathered to collect spilled fuel after a road accident, authorities and witnesses said. Saturday.
The explosion occurred on Friday night after a bus collided with truck in Wellington, a suburb east of Freetown, in Sierra Leone. The morgue of the Connaught Hospital reported that as of Saturday morning it had received 92 bodies. Foday Musa, a staff member of the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, said about 30 people with severe burns may not survive.
The wounded, whose clothes were burned in the fire that followed the explosion, they waited lying naked on the stretchers while the nurses treated them on Saturday. Hundreds of people gathered outside the doors of the morgue and hospital waiting for news of their loved ones.
It was not immediately clear how many people were being treated for burns because those affected were transferred to various hospitals and clinics in the metropolitan area.
It was a tragic scene
A video posted on social media showed the destruction of the site after the explosion, while some severely burned survivors screamed in pain. The charred remains of the fatalities lay at the scene of the incident awaiting their transfer to the morgues.
The President of the country, Julius Maada Bio, who was in Scotland to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, lamented the “horrible loss of life.” “My condolences to the families who have lost loved ones and those who have been mutilated as a result,” the president tweeted.
For his part, the vice president, Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, visited two hospitals during the night and pointed out that the National Agency for Disaster Management and other agencies “are working tirelessly” after what happened. “We are all deeply saddened by this national tragedy, and it is a really difficult time for our country,” he said on his Facebook page.
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With AP / msb information
