No fewer than 96 people died in an explosion at a petrol station in Ghana’s capital, Accra when they ran to take cover from torrential rain, on Wednesday night.
According to Ghana’s fire brigade, the explosion also left several people with various degrees of injury.
The blast was said to have been caused by a fire that erupted at a nearby lorry terminal and then spread to the petrol station as well as other buildings.
6ire brigade spokesman Prince Billy Anaglate explained that the fire ripped through the filling station, operated by GOIL , shattering windows and walls and reducing the station to rubble.
“It was an explosive fire and so the people sheltering at the filling station did not have an opportunity to escape.”
Firefighters battled the blaze into the early hours of today even as police and soldiers joined emergency crews helping rescue people trapped in the wreckage.
Charred corpses and wreckage of about a dozen cars and mini buses littered the forecourt of the station, where security forces kept an anxious crowd behind a police cordon. [myad]
