Former South Sudan’s vice-president and leader of the armed opposition faction, SPLM-IO, said the fuel tank explosion which reportedly resulted to over a 100 people dead and many more injured was a tragedy that should be investigated.
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Local hospitals have been overwhelmed, and state officials have appealed to the Red Cross and the United Nations for help, BBC reported.
Mariam Tito, chief of the Mambe Mayan district, told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus program Thursday that the death toll was likely to rise due to the severity of many victims’ burns.
“People are still dying; they have not assessed the exact number in the hospital”, Zamoi said.
But South Sudan is also in the grip of a dire economic crisis sparked by over 21-months of civil war, which has caused rampant inflation and soaring prices of basics, including food and fuel.
The minister noted that “those people may not survive because we do not have the facilities to treat the highly burnt people”.
Such incidents have happened before in the east African region where fuel tankers often have to travel long distances along potholed roads and pass through poor communities.
The government and rebels signed a peace deal on August 29, but the ceasefire – the eighth agreed – has been repeatedly broken as fighting continues. “This was an accident”, Ateny Wek Ateny said.
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The oil tanker was going from the South Sudanese capital Juba to Yambio in Western Equatoria but it broke down near Maridi, where people flocked around it to scoop up the spilled fuel when it exploded.
