At least 91 were killed when an oil tanker exploded at a busy junction in Sierra Leone.
The fuel carrier was involved in a collision in Freetown, the capital city, last night.
It ignited shortly after, triggering a blast which killed anyone in the immediate vicinity and started a fire which spread to neighbouring buildings.
The full death toll is not yet known but the central state morgue has reported receiving dozens of bodies so far.
Victims included people who had flocked to collect fuel leaking from the ruptured vehicle, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of the port city, said in a post on Facebook.
The tragedy is believed to have taken place outside a supermarket in the Wellington region of the city at around 10pm.
Images shared widely online showed several badly burned victims lying on the streets.
Brima Bureh Sesay, head of the National Disaster Management Agency, said: ‘We’ve got so many casualties, burnt corpses. It’s a terrible, terrible accident.’
President Julius Maada Bio tweeted: ‘My profound sympathies with families who have lost loved ones and those who have been maimed as a result.
‘My Government will do everything to support affected families.’
Accidents with tanker trucks in Sub-Saharan Africa have previously killed scores of people who gathered at the site to collect spilled fuel and were hit by secondary blasts.
In 2019, a tanker explosion in eastern Tanzania killed 85 people, while around 50 people were killed in a similar disaster in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
