The wounded have been handled in hospitals and clinics throughout the capital, deputy well being minister Amara Jambai advised Reuters.
Victims included individuals who had flocked to gather gasoline leaking from the ruptured car, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of the port metropolis, mentioned in a put up on Fb, though that put up was later edited to take away the reference.
“We’ve bought so many casualties, burnt corpses,” mentioned Brima Bureh Sesay, head of the Nationwide Catastrophe Administration Company, in a video from the scene shared on-line. “It’s a horrible, horrible accident.”
Movies shared on-line shortly after the explosion confirmed folks working by clouds of thick smoke as giant fires lit up the evening sky. Reuters was not in a position instantly to confirm the photographs, however witnesses described the horror.
“We’re all in shock. A woman I had simply purchased bread from died. A stunning lady. I can’t recover from this grief,” mentioned Abdul Kabia, crying on the crash web site surrounded by mangled automobiles.
The crash supplied a significant problem for Freetown’s well being service already creaking from years of underfunding. The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic gutted the nation’s ranks of medical workers, 250 of whom died, and the system has not recovered.
Connaught Hospital was overwhelmed with the inflow of sufferers, so a number of the injured have been moved to different places, together with a army hospital, mentioned Swaray Lengor, a programme supervisor on the Worldwide Federation of Purple Cross and Purple Crescent Societies.
“The state of affairs on the hospital, particularly Connaught hospital … is overwhelming. Insufficient medical consumables and mattress capability,” Lengor advised Reuters by textual content message. “NGO companions have been requested to assist with tools, medical commodities and meals.”
The dying toll would probably rise, he mentioned.
The World Well being Group mentioned it could ship provides and deploy specialists in burn accidents.
“We’ll present extra assist as wanted at this horrible time for the folks of Sierra Leone,” it mentioned on Twitter.
Accidents with tanker vans in Sub-Saharan Africa have beforehand killed scores of people that gathered on the web site to gather spilled gasoline and have been hit by secondary blasts.
In 2019, a tanker explosion in Tanzania killed 85 folks, whereas round 50 folks have been killed in the same catastrophe in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
(REUTERS)