At least 91 people were killed in the capital of Sierra Leone on Friday when a fuel tanker exploded following a collision, the central morgue and local authorities said.
The explosion happened after a 40ft-long oil tanker crashed with another vehicle at a busy junction in the capital city. Local media footages showed badly burnt bodies on the road surrounding the tanker.
The government has not yet confirmed the death toll, but the manager of the central state morgue in Freetown said it had received 91 bodies following the explosion.
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Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr described watching the footage as "harrowing" but said that the magnitude of the damage was not yet clear.
In a Facebook post, the mayor said there were "rumours that more than 100 people have lost their lives", however there is no official death toll yet.
The blast is believed to have taken place at a junction outside the busy Choithram Supermarket in the Wellington area of Freetown at around 22.00 GMT on Friday.
Sierre Leone's National Disaster Management head, Brima Bureh Sesay, told local media that the event had been "a terrible, terrible accident".
The capital city, which has a population of just over a million people, has suffered several major disasters in recent years.
More than 80 people were injured in March after fire broke out in one of the city's slums, which left more than 5,000 people displaced.
Besides, in 2017 over 1,000 people were dead after torrential rains resulted in a mudslide that swept through the capital city, leaving around 3,000 people homeless.
(With Agency inputs)
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