Up to 500 Nigerians who were scavenging gasoline from a busted pipeline were burned alive Tuesday morning when the pipeline burst into flames, The Associated Press reported.
The heat from the raging fire kept rescue workers away, but they reported seeing hundreds of charred bodies engulfed in the flames as black smoke smothered Nigeria’s most heavily populated city, Lagos, in the neighborhood of Adule Egba, AP reported.
“We can only recognize them through the skulls, the bodies are scattered over the ground,” said Ige Oladimeji, a senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, noting that workers “can’t get close enough because the fire is still burning.”
The gasoline pipeline ruptured shortly after midnight, and hundreds showed up with plastic jerry cans to collect the leaking fuel, which accumulated in pools just before it caught fire, according to AP.
Officials said they did not know what caused the rupture or the ignition of the fuel.
This is the third deadly December pipeline fire in as many years.