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A boy has been arrested by police in connection with a petroleum fire which began on Monday and killed 17 people in Abia State, 'The Guardian' newspaper of Lagos reported.
The fire, which firefighters have put out, started in a pit dug by villagers to collect petrol leaking from a burst oil pipe belonging to the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), the paper said on Thursday. The fire was believed to have been ignited by a boy lighting a match in the air saturated with petrol fumes. PPMC sources said that pipelines in the area had been vandalised.
Villagers in Ogwe, Ukwa-West Council Area had been fetching the product from the pit for two months and selling 60 litres of petrol for about 1,000 naira (US $1), the daily said. In October 1998, at least 700 people died in a pipeline fire near Warri, in the Niger Delta, while trying to siphon off petrol from a burst pipeline.
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