Up to 500 people were burned alive yesterday when fuel from a vandalized pipeline exploded in Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, emergency workers said.
Witnesses said professional thieves broke into the pipeline after midnight and hundreds of men, women and children rushed in later to scoop up the fuel with jerry cans, plastic buckets and bags.
It was unclear what ignited the gasoline.
Abiodun Orebiyi, secretary-general of the Nigerian Red Cross, said there was no official death toll but estimated that between 200 and 500 people could have been killed.
"We know it is over 200 [dead]. We are talking hundreds. We don't know if it is 300, 400 or 500," he said, adding that 60 people had been evacuated to hospital with serious burns.
Those who got burned had been taken to hospital in Ikeja, another northern suburb.
Police at the scene refused to give estimates of the number of dead and injured.
But a senior Lagos State police officer earlier said that: "Maybe around 45 people were rushed to hospital and a number of people lost their lives."
Journalists said they saw the remains of hundreds of bodies, most burned beyond recognition, lying at the scene of the explosion as emergency workers tried to put out the fire.
Intense heat kept rescue workers back as smoke billowed over the heavily populated Abule Egba neighborhood.
Some corpses lay rigid on the ground -- arms and legs in the air as if still trying to escape -- their clothes and skin burned off by the blast.
"A lot of people have been roasted. They are littered on the ground," one rescue worker said.
Local television stations were running messages advising the residents of neighborhoods near the scene of the blast to evacuate the area.
A group of women sat crying on a bench.
"One friend knocked on our door and told my husband they were taking fuel. My husband ran out with two buckets and now he has gone. This is a curse from God," said a woman who gave her name as Ole.
"This was a preventable tragedy," said Joel Ogundere, whose home was adjacent to the blast.
"It was poverty, ignorance and greed," said the lawyer, who didn't give his age.
A similar explosion at a vandalized pipeline in another part of Lagos in May killed about 200 people.
Pipeline vandalism and fuel theft are common in Nigeria, the world's eighth-largest oil exporter where most people live in poverty.
Shortages in recent days have prompted hours-long lines at Lagos filling stations.
The pipeline is owned by Nigeria's state-owned petroleum company and was transporting refined fuel for domestic consumption.
The blast wasn't expected to affect the country's oil production in Africa's largest exporter of oil.
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