Lagos - A leaking petrol pipeline burst into flames yesterday, killing more than 60 people. Many of the dead were fisherman in wooden canoes.
More than a dozen burned bodies lay on a beach at the village of Ebute-Oko facing the central business district of Lagos across a lagoon. "At least 60 people died in this needless fire," a local official, Mr Karimu Alabi, said.
Residents said the fire started near Ebute-Oko at daybreak and spread rapidly along the line of the oil leak, ravaging a cluster of huts and log houses. At about the same time, a second fire razed Makoko shantytown where thousands of fishermen and their families live in wood cabins erected on stilts in the lagoon near Lagos University.
Residents said fishermen from Makoko had been scavenging for gasoline from the leaking pipeline and storing it in jerrycans in the wooden huts for days.