100 killed in Lagos pipeline explosion

LAGOS (AFP) - An oil pipeline explosion killed about 100 people on Thursday in a northern suburb of Nigeria's biggest city Lagos, the Red Cross said.
"About 100 people were confirmed dead in the explosion. We have also evacuated about 20 others to the Ikeja general hospital," Red Cross official Sule Mekudi told AFP from the scene.
"Most of the evacuees were seriously burnt," he added.
Abdulsalam Muhammad, a spokesman for the country's national emergency agency, said earlier that 10 people had been killed and at least 36 people rescued and taken to a nearby military hospital.
Rescuers were beginning to leave the Ijegun scene as darkness set in, Abdulsalam said.
"We are just leaving the scene now. The fire has drastically reduced. We will also discuss (how) to improve on our level of preparedness against future occurrence," he said.
A combined team of firefighters from the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the fire service, construction firm Julius Berger and state-run oil giant Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) managed to put off the fire," he said.
Lagos police spokesman Frank Mba said rescue operations were ongoing but that it was too early to provide casualty figures.
"We are still appraising the situation. At this stage, I cannot confirm the cause of the explosion and the casualty figure," he said.
Witnesses earlier said local people were trying to help firefighters extinguish the blaze, using sand and water.
The Red Cross official said the explosion was caused by a piece of earth-moving machinery working on a road construction site that accidentally burst the pipeline, causing an explosion and a fire. The scene of the blast in Ijegun, which was near a primary school, was littered with shoes and bags belonging to pupils, a journalist at the scene told AFP.