Number of deaths from the explosion is likely to increase as the casualty numbers reflect only those in the morgue, according to police.
The following written content from i24
Thirteen people were killed and others seriously burned when a “huge fireball” engulfed a crowd in Kenya as they siphoned fuel from an overturned petrol truck that ignited without warning.
Police said Sunday the death toll could rise, with investigators trying to account for the missing, and charred bones found among the twisted wreckage of the fuel tanker.
The truck collided with another vehicle and turned over near Malanga, some 195 miles northwest of Nairobi, on a busy highway near the Uganda border.
Onlookers rushed to the crash site with jerrycans to collect the leaking fuel but shortly after the truck exploded, consuming the crowd in a terrible inferno.
“We were woken up by a very loud blast. When I rushed out, I saw a huge fireball and people were screaming,” said nearby resident Jack Odhiambo.
Those on the scene first managed to get away safely with some fuel, said witness Magdalene Adhiambo.
But others went back for a second round, and the crowd grew larger as more and more people arrived hoping to get lucky.
“That’s when the fire started,” she said.
Wycliffe Otieno said he had just started filling his jerrycan when the slick around him ignited.
“I was able to run to safety… I just don’t know how lucky I was, because I have been told the people we were with did not survive,” Otieno said from his hospital bed. Read more about the tragic explosion from i24
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