Guwahati News Desk: At least 92 people were killed and dozens severely injured, in an oil tanker explosion near Sierra Leone’s capital.
The explosion took place on late Friday, after a bus struck the tanker in Wellington, a suburb just to the east of Freetown.
The President Julius Maada Bio, who was in Scotland attending the United Nations climate talks on Saturday, deplored the “horrendous loss of life.”
He expressed his grief through a post on Twitter, that read as, “My profound sympathies with families who have lost loved ones and those who have been maimed as a result.”
According to sources, the injured people whose clothes had burned off in the fire that followed the explosion, lay naked on stretchers as nurses attended to them Saturday.
As reported by the mortuary at Connaught Hospital, 92 bodies had been brought in by Saturday morning, and about 30 others were severely burned, with very less expectations of their survival.
The Vice President Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh visited two hospitals overnight and asserted that Sierra Leone’s National Disaster Management Agency and others would “work tirelessly” in the wake of the emergency.
Expressing his grief through a post on his Facebook page, the Vice President wrote, “We are all deeply saddened by this national tragedy and it is indeed a difficult time for our country.”
Furthermore, several videos of the explosion’s aftermath surfaced on social media, that showed a giant fireball burning in the night sky as some survivors with severe burns cried out in pain, and charred remains of the victims lay strewn at the scene awaiting transport to mortuaries.