More than 100 people were burnt to death after a petrol fire ignited by a cigarette butt broke out in a densely populated slum in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
The ambulance service said it had taken more than 80 people to hospitals around the city, many burned beyond recognition.
The pipeline runs through the heavily populated slum of Embakasi between the city centre and the airport.
Local television channels aired images of smouldering skeletons as the fire raged through the slum. Badly burnt slum dwellers staggered in a daze, skin peeling off their faces and arms.
Citizen television quoted an official at the scene who said he had counted more than 120 dead bodies. Capital FM radio said the dead numbered more than 150.
"The scene is bad, there is a large number of people burnt to death," deputy police spokesman Charles Owino said. "There are many bodies, we are yet to count them."
Mr Owino said the fire started after a fuel tank at a depot belonging to the Kenya Pipeline Company spilled fuel into an open sewer flowing through the slum.
Residents of the slum tried to scoop up the fuel from the burst pipe and other from the sewer, but were burnt when the petrol ignited after someone tossed a cigarette butt into the sewer, he said.
Firefighters scrambled across the corrugated rooftops of burning shacks to pour foam on petrol that flowed down the slum's muddy alleyways. Ambulances ferried dozens of wounded to nearby hospitals.
"There is an informal school inside the slum, they have all been burnt," Daniel Mutinda, a spokesman the Kenya Red Cross, said.
Agencies