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Toll from Tanzania truck blast reaches 100
NAIROBI, Aug 21, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The death toll from a fuel truck
explosion in Tanzania on August 10 hit 100 on Wednesday after several victims
perished from severe burns.
Aminiel Aligaesha, a spokesman for the National Hospital in Dar es Salaam,
told reporters “two people died on Tuesday during the day, and another on
Tuesday night”, bringing the total number of dead to 100.
Officials had put the tally at 95 on Sunday, and another two people were
announced dead on Monday.
At least 30 of the victims died in the days after the accident, in which a
fireball engulfed a crowd thronging to collect petrol from an overturned
tanker near Morogoro, 200 kilometres (125 miles) west of Dar es Salaam.
Officials said the explosion was triggered when a man tried to take the
truck’s battery, creating sparks that ignited the fuel.
A doctor at the hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP
that most of those who survived the initial blast had suffered burns on over
80 percent of their body.
“We are doing our best, but most of them are in critical condition,” said
the doctor.
Many of the victims are motorbike taxi drivers who rushed to the scene to
try to siphon off leaking petrol.
It was the latest in a string of such disasters in Africa and at least the
third this year.
Last month, 45 people were killed and more than 100 injured in central
Nigeria when a petrol tanker crashed and then exploded as people tried to
take the fuel.
In May, a similar incident in Niger killed nearly 80 people.
In the worst tragedy, 292 people lost their lives in eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo in July 2010, while in September 2015 at least 203 people
died the South Sudan town of Maridi.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1630 hrs