Thirteen people were killed on Saturday night when an overturned petrol tanker exploded in Malanga, Western Kenya.
The deceased had thronged to the scene of a collision between the tanker and another vehicle on the busy highway between Kisumu and the border with Uganda to collect the spilling fuel with jerrycans when it exploded.
Charles Chacha, a local police chief in Siaya County where the accident occurred, on Sunday, said 12 bodies were counted at the scene while another person died in hospital from their injuries.
Firefighters arrived at the scene two hours later to put out the fire, while those injured were taken to the hospital.
“Many others have been taken to hospital with serious burns and they include young children,” Chacha said.
The cause of the explosion is not yet known.
Fuel truck accidents are common in Kenya, as well as throughout East Africa. In 2009, more than 120 people were killed in a massive explosion caused by an overturned petrol tanker.
In August 2021, one person died after four trucks, including a petrol tanker, caught fire in multiple accident along the Northern Corridor in Teso North Sub County.
A middle-aged couple and their three children died in May 2021 after their vehicle collided head-on with a fuel tanker in the Taru area on the Mombasa-Nairobi highway.
Four other persons, who were also in the private vehicle, sustained serious injuries but survived the crash. The four survivors are the man’s second wife, his two other relatives and a mechanic.
