Up to 100 dead after blaze sweeps through city slum

Up to 100 people are thought to have burnt to death and a similar number were taken to hospital. Police said it was proving difficult to establish the exact number of dead among the charred remains.

Locals said petrol spilled from a fuel depot owned by the Kenya Pipeline Company and ran into a sewage dyke that runs under the slum, known as Sinai. The petrol ignited, causing an inferno.

“So far we have taken 75 bodies to the mortuary, but we are still searching for more,” Wilfred Mbithi, an assistant commissioner of police said.

Police spokesman Charles Owino said the fire was started by a cigarette butt tossed onto the dyke, which opens into a small river. Authorities said they were battling the fire in an area estimated to be just over an acre.

Local TV channels aired images of smouldering skeletons as the fire raged through the slum.

Children in school uniform ran in all directions, badly burnt slum dwellers staggered in a daze and the smell of smoke and burning flesh filled the air.

Prime minister Raila Odinga visited the scene of the fire.

“The government will do everything possible to ensure the injured will be treated and the families who have lost their loved ones will be compensated,” he said, speaking through the sun-roof of his 4x4 vehicle.

Mr Odinga wiped tears after visiting the injured in hospital.

President Mwai Kibaki also visited patients with severe burns at the country’s largest public hospital.

Police said some of the slum’s residents were killed while trying to scoop up fuel from the burst pipe and from the sewer, possibly having hoped to sell the petrol on the black market.

Firefighters scrambled across the corrugated iron rooftops of burning shacks to spray foam on petrol that flowed down alleys.

Energy minister Kiraitu Mutungi said: “Some people have squatted on the top of the area reserved for the pipeline. We have tried to move them, but so far we have been unsuccessful.”

Residents have in the past refused to move despite repeated warnings, saying they had nowhere else to go to.

One of the residents of the slum said people had rushed to fill their jerry cans with free petrol before the explosion.

Sammy Njenga, 21, who is unemployed, said: “I was going to the loo down by the river just after 4am when I saw the gold flowing from the pipe. I ran home and grabbed two jerry cans and went back to fill them up. As I finished and turned away there was a boom as the fuel ignited.

“I could feel the flames on my back. I had been standing next to a mother-of-three who wasn’t fast enough. She died.”

Nearby, a young woman clawed through smouldering timbers, screaming in grief. Others frantically dialled phone numbers that didn’t connect, or stared around in disbelief.

Resident Joseph Mwangi, 34, said he was feeding his cow when people went running past him, calling out that there was a leak in the pipeline. He said others started drawing fuel and that he was going to go and get a bucket and get fuel too when he heard an explosion.

By then fuel had leaked into the river and parts of the river had also caught fire. People in flames were jumping into the fiery, stinking mess, he said.

Moments after speaking to reporters, Mr Mwangi discovered two small charred bodies in the burnt wreckage of his home.

“Those were my children,” he said blankly, before collapsing on the ground sobbing.

Michael Muriuki, found the body of his young daughter, still smouldering. He ran to the river for water to put out the fire.

He took a deep breath and struggled to control his emotions before speaking.

“Her name was Josephine Muriuki. She was five,” he said.