The explosion and fire after a car accident in which a fuel tanker was involved on November 5 in the capital of Sierra Leone resulted in the death of 144 people, according to a new official report of the victims published yesterday Saturday by the Ministry of Health.
An earlier official report put the death toll at 131.
According to the ministry, 57 victims are being treated in hospitals, 11 of them in critical condition.
The tragedy unfolded when a tanker collided with another heavy vehicle at a gas station in an industrial area of ​​the capital Freetown, before it exploded and caught fire.
According to eyewitnesses, most of the victims were street vendors and motorcyclists trying to collect fuel leaking from the tanker.
Sierra Leone, once a British colony of 7.5 million people, is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite the fact that its subsoil is particularly rich in diamonds.
Its economy, plagued by the gangrene of corruption, is still struggling to recover from the devastating civil war (1991-2002) that killed 120,000 people, the Ebola epidemic and the new coronavirus pandemic.
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