Share & more
Up to 250 people may have died following a pipeline explosion near Warri in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of southeastern Nigeria, media sources in Lagos told IRIN on Tuesday.
The police were reported to have sealed off the area and firefighters were still trying on Tuesday to control the blaze, believed to have started on Sunday night.
Villagers were collecting petrol in buckets from the vandalised pipeline when the explosion took place. There has been no official confirmation of casualty figures but local journalists said they had counted 120 charred bodies in the area, according to the BBC.
Other local sources put the figure as high as 250 and there are fears that
even more may have died.
Fuel shortages in Nigeria have led to a thriving black market and villagers
in the neglected southern region often risk their lives to collect fuel from
vandalised pipelines so as to sell it.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions