More than 100 people are reported to have been killed after a fuel tanker exploded on Wednesday in Maridi County of Western Equatoria State in South Sudan.
Information from the place noted that local hospitals had been flabbergasted by the injured people and that they do not have medical equipment and some basic medical supplies like oxygen and pain killers.
A local doctor said that they were running out of basic medical supplies like oxygen and pain killers.
According to local officials, the vehicle was “full of petrol” which started to leak after the crash.
The driver is reported to have walked to the next village to ask for help and locals began siphoning the fuel. There are however conflicting reports on the cause of the explosion; one source told Radio Bakhita in Juba that the incident happened when one person lit cigarette near an overturned petrol tanker where people gathered to harvest the oozing fuel, while some media reports indicated that some SPLA members fired into the air to scare away people who were harvesting fuel from the overturned vehicle only to cause explosion and death of civilians and soldiers.
The spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in the South Sudanese capital of Juba, Layal Horanieh said that the aid group had sent two burn kits to Maridi, each with enough equipment to treat at least 50 patients.
Deadly fuel tanker explosions are common in East Africa, where poor residents living near highways converge around fuel tankers involved in accidents to steal gasoline and then sell it. Similar incident happen in Kenya in the year 2009 when a total of 100 people were killed after a fuel tanker burst into flames two hours after it overturned at Sachangwan trading centre along the Nakuru-Eldoret Highway.
Source: CRN and News Agencies
