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AT least 92 people died after a tanker collided with a truck and exploded as a crowd gathered to collect leaking fuel, said officials and witnesses.
The explosion took place after the two vehicles hit each other in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone and the flames then spread, burning people in cars.
Video shows a giant fireball burning in the night sky following the explosion, as some survivors with severe burns cried out in pain.
Charred remains of the victims lay strewn at the scene awaiting transport to mortuaries.
A further 100 casualties have been admitted for treatment at hospitals and clinics across the capital, deputy health minister Amara Jambai told Reuters.
The mortuary at Connaught Hospital reported that 92 bodies had been brought in by Saturday morning.
Around 30 severely burned victims were not expected to survive, according to staff.
Victims included people who had flocked to collect fuel leaking from the ruptured vehicle, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of the port city.
The majority of the victims were street vendors and motorcyclists, many of whom were caught in the blaze while trying to retrieve fuel, witness Jusu Jacka Yorma who was at the scene.
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Hundreds of people gathered at the scene of the tragedy, many searching for missing relatives under the eye of security forces.
Brima Bureh Sesay, head of the National Disaster Management Agency, said in a video from the scene shared online: "We've got so many casualties, burnt corpses.
"It's a terrible, terrible accident."
Images shared widely online showed several badly burned victims lying on the streets as fire blazed through shops and houses nearby.
President Julius Maada Bio, who was in Scotland attending the United Nations climate talks Saturday, deplored the horrendous loss of life.
“My profound sympathies with families who have lost loved ones and those who have been maimed as a result,” he tweeted.
Accidents with tanker trucks in Africa have previously killed scores of people who gathered at the site to collect spilled fuel and were hit by secondary blasts.
In 2019, a tanker explosion in Tanzania killed 85 people.
Around 50 people were killed in a similar disaster in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
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