Freetown – Sierra Leone on Monday held a mass burial for dozens of victims of the fuel-tanker explosion that ripped through the capital Freetown and killed at least 115 people, according to the latest toll.
Thousands of mourners lined the road as 85 bodies were taken to a cemetary on the outskirts of the city that had been used in the past to bury victims of Ebola outbreaks, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
The explosion was sparked after a lorry crashed into a fuel tanker on Friday.
Witnesses say most of the victims were street sellers and motorcyclists who were engulfed in flames as they tried to retrieve fuel leaking from the tanker before it ignited.
“We are here today to give a dignified burial to our compatriots,” President Julius Maada Bio said at the funeral, promising a thorough investigation to ensure such an event would not happen again.
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Ninety-one people were also injured, some of them very seriously, according to the most recent toll from the National Disaster Management Agency.
However, health authorities also made an urgent appeal for blood donations to treat more than 100 burns victims admitted to hospital.
“We desperately need medical material for critical burns cases,” Dr Moses Batima, deputy director general of the health ministry’s medical supplies agency, told AFP.
He said items such as infusion fluids, material to dress wounds, bandages and painkillers were in short supply with hospitals already having delved into reserves.
Batima said some World Health Organisation supplies had begun coming in as well as donations but that it was not enough.
“We are appealing to the international community for aid for medical equipment for the most serious cases,” he added, saying hospitals were unable to cope.
Bio on Sunday declared three days of mourning in the former British colony of 7.5 million people.
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Source: AFP
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