Joseph Mwangi hoped and prayed his children had escaped the inferno caused when a leaking gasoline pipeline exploded, sending flames racing through a Nairobi slum and killing at least 82 people.
Then he saw two small blackened bodies in the wreckage of his home.
“Those were my children,” he sobbed, collapsing in anguish amid the charred corrugated iron sheets and twisted metal.
Mwangi had been feeding his cow when the call went out at about 9am on Monday — a section of pipe had burst near the river that cuts through the slum and gasoline was pouring out. Men, women and children grabbed pails, jerry cans, anything they could find to collect the flowing fuel.
Mwangi had planned to get a bucket and join them — he’d done so before with earlier diesel leaks without any problem, he said, and a bucket of fuel could pay a month’s rent.
“Everybody knows that fuel is gold,” the 34-year-old said.
However, before he could join the others, an explosion rocked the area, sending a fireball racing through the Sinai slum in Nairobi’s industrial zone. Screaming men and women in flames desperately jumped into the river and a nearby sewage ditch, but fuel had leaked into the rancid water and in many places it caught alight.
Red Cross coordinator Pamela Indiaka said at least 82 bodies had been recovered and the death toll was expected to rise. At least 112 people were taken to hospitals with severe burns.
“I’ve lost count of the number of bodies,” police official Wilfred Mbithi said as he stood at the scene, where burned corpses floated in the waste water for most of the day.
Hours after the blast, charred skeletons laid on the ground as firefighters battled to control the flames and shocked, weeping residents wandered through the wreckage. Survivors told of hellish scenes as flames leaped through the slum’s twisting, filthy alleyways filled with people. Some burning victims fled into nearby homes igniting bed linen or clothing.
Michael Muriuki said that’s what happened to his wife and three children when neighbors, their clothing aflame, ran into their shack while he was at work. His wife and two of the children escaped, but his five-year-old daughter was trapped. Muriuki found her smoldering body when he returned home.
“Her name was Josephine,” he said brokenly.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS