Pipeline Blasts Kill Hundreds on 2 Continents

A pipeline explosion apparently sparked by thieves siphoning oil led to an inferno that killed at least 250 people, destroyed villages and charred surrounding cropland. The fire began late Saturday and was still raging Sunday night.

An official death toll was not available, but journalists and witnesses near the town of Jesse, 180 miles southeast of Lagos, estimated that at least 250 people were killed.

There were 230 bodies in one pile of corpses, journalists said, and residents said at least a dozen more bodies already had been taken away by relatives. In addition, some of the injured taken to area hospitals had died, officials said.

Many of the victims were farmers and villagers sleeping in their homes when the fire began. Vandals also were among the dead, including children. Their corpses had been found still clutching plastic cups, funnels and cans intended to collect fuel from the pipeline.

Military commander Walter Feghabo ordered a mass burial for those whose bodies were charred beyond recognition.

“I feel terrible,” Emmanuel Akhihiero, a government petroleum official, said in a telephone interview. “I cannot believe what I have seen. Corpses, corpses.”

Feghabo said that more than 120 firefighters still were trying late Sunday to contain the flames in Jesse and the nearby villages of Mossogar and Oghara.

The above-ground pipeline, linking an oil refinery in Warri, 200 miles southeast of Lagos, the commercial capital, with the northern city of Kaduna, nearly 400 miles away, exploded when thieves sabotaged the line to siphon oil, an official for Nigeria’s state petroleum corporation said.

Authorities believe that the vandals’ tools had caused a spark, setting the pipeline ablaze. Witnesses said they heard a loud roar and saw the oily flames move quickly as the slick spread.

Vandals and protesters often sabotage petroleum pipelines in Nigeria as a way of demanding greater financial assistance from the government and multinational oil companies as well as to collect fuel.