Up to 200 people died yesterday when an oil pipeline blew up at a beach village near the Nigerian economic capital Lagos, a policeman at the scene said.
The officer, who asked not to be named, put the death toll at between 150 and 200 "or even more."
The Nigerian Red Cross had earlier reported more than 100 deaths as a result of the explosion at Ilado beach village, near the port of Apapa, where numerous oil installations are located.
"Over 100 people were burnt to death and beyond recognition following the explosion," Nigerian Red Cross Secretary General Abiodun Orebiyi told reporters by telephone.
"We have been unable to recover any injured person. All of them were burnt beyond recognition. We found at the scene of the explosion about 500 jerrycans which we suspect were used to steal fuel from the pipeline," he said.
One correspondent at the scene reported seeing scores of carbonized, disfigured corpses floating on the water and lying under a boat that had been destroyed by the flames. Only the bones remained of some victims.
There were indications several had attempted to flee before the fireball completely engulfed them, the correspondent said.
Orebiyi said the "raging fire" had been put out and normality was returning to Ilado.
He said Red Cross workers at the scene had found evidence that people had been trying to siphon off oil from the pipeline.
"We found that vandals have drilled holes on [into] the pipeline, from where they have been stealing fuel. We advise strongly Nigerians to desist from this dangerous act,"Orebiyi said.
Private TV netowrk Channels said firefighters and oil officials had been sent to Ilado village.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema