Lagos: According to emergency services on Sunday, the number of fatalities from the Nigerian petrol tanker truck explosion that killed individuals rushing to collect fuel has increased to 86.
According to authorities, the truck carrying 60,000 liters (about 16,000 gallons) of gasoline flipped over on a route in the middle of the nation on Saturday and exploded.
Ibrahim Audu Husseini, a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency in Niger state, stated that 86 people had died as a result of the tanker explosion.
He stated, “We buried 86 burnt corpses between 12pm yesterday and 2am of today,” revising the previous number of 70.
“We had to get locals to dig the mass grave by hand because we couldn’t get excavators, so it took us 14 hours to bury the bodies.”
The Dikko intersection, which connects the northern city of Kaduna with the federal capital Abuja, was the site of the explosion.
A similar disaster in northern Nigeria’s Jigawa State in October claimed the lives of over 170 individuals.