At Least 13 Dead In Kenya After Petrol Truck Explosion

Thirteen people have died and others seriously burned in northwest Kenya after a petrol truck that had overturned caught on fire.

Reports say as the fuel tanker collide with another vehicule on a highway connecting the town of Kisumu to neighbouring Uganda, onlookers rushed to the crash site with jerrycans to collect the leaking fuel.

But the truck ignited without warning, leaving many shocked and scarred. Those on the scene first managed to get away safely with some fuel, said witness Magdalene Adhiambo.

But others went back for a second round, and the crowd grew larger as more and more people arrived hoping to get lucky.

Charles Chacha, a local police chief in Siaya County where the accident occurred, said 24 people were in hospital with serious burns. Earlier, he said children were among those injured.

He said the death toll at the time was 13 adding that the death toll could rise, with investigators trying to account for those missing, and charred bones found among the twisted wreckage of the fuel tanker.

Fire crews arrived on the scene two hours later to douse the inferno. The cause of the explosion is not yet known.

Deadly accidents involving fuel trucks are not uncommon in Kenya and the wider East Africa region. In 2009, more than 100 people had died in similar circumstances northwest of Nairobi.

More recently, at least 100 people were killed when a tanker exploded in Tanzania in 2019 while in 2015 more than 200 perished in a similar accident in South Sudan.