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Red Cross searches for injured, as around 200 die in Lagos pipeline blast
AFP
LAGOS
Petroleumworld.com 05 13 06
Officials of the Nigerian Red Cross searched in vain Friday for people injured following a pipeline blast near Nigerian commercial capital Lagos in which up to 200 people were burned death
"We have combed through the bushes and nearby creeks to see if we can find those injured so that we give them medical assistance," Red Cross Secretary General Abiodun Orebiyi told AFP.
"We have seen none yet. We are appealing to those who may be in hiding to come out for medical attention,"he said.
"The estimated number of people who died is between 150 and 200...The people who died in the inferno are suspected to be pipeline vandals," Lagos police chief Emmanuel Adebayo told reporters, although another security official put the toll at more than 200.
"None (of the fuel thieves) is remaining alive to tell us the story of how it started," said Adebayo, in a statement suggesting that all the suspected fuel thieves at the Ilado village beach scene of the explosion were burned to death.
The Nigerian Red Cross had earlier reported more than 100 deaths from the blast early Friday at Ilado beach village, near Apapa seaport where numerous oil installations are located.
Scorched beyond recognition, corpses floated on the water or lay exposed on the sand as rescue workers and police picked through the debris.
Lagos-based Channels private television Friday evening showed footage of the vandalised pipeline and some charred corpses being removed by rescue officials from the scene of the blast.
Close to 2,000 people have died in more than a dozen pipeline explosions across the country between 1998 and 2003, according to figures established by AFP.
In the worst single recorded incident in October 1998, 1,082 people thought to have been siphoning off fuel died in Jesse, in the oil-rich southern Delta State, after a pipeline there erupted.
A few weeks ago, the thickly-populated Oke-Odo community on the northern outskirts of Lagos narrowly averted disaster after petrol gushed freely out of a vandalised pipeline for four days before it was repaired.
AFP 12 1937 GMT 05 06
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