No fewer than seven people were killed and about 16 others badly burnt after a tanker truck exploded in a village in the western Democratic Republic of Congo, a provincial chief has confirmed.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the blast had occurred overnight in the village of Mbuba which was about 120 kilometres (75 miles) west of the capital Kinshasa, Kongo Central provincial governor Guy Bandu tweeted.
Mbuba lies on the busy RN1 highway linking Kinshasa to the ports of Matadi and Boma.
No fewer than 50 people were reportedly killed in a fuel-tanker blast in the same village sometime in October 2018.
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‘It is high time to take bold and drastic measures to strengthen transport regulations, especially for flammable products, to end to this cycle of accidents,’ the provincial governor tweeted.
Later in the day, Bandu gave the toll of seven dead and 16 badly burned in the latest blast, stressing that the figures were provisional.
Mabiala Khonde, a civil-society representative in the area who passed the scene of the accident, said the truck had toppled over and was leaking fuel.
In another report, seventeen people died on Thursday during a militia attack on a village in northeastern DR Congo, a local civil society head announced.
Gunmen from the feared CODECO militia stormed Mbidjo in Ituri province’s Djugu territory during the morning, said Jules Uwechi, chairman of the village’s civil society group.
‘They opened fire, set houses ablaze, and pillaged the property of villagers… I myself narrowly escaped,’ Uwechi said in the provincial capital Bunia.
‘When we went back we found 17 people had been killed — seven women, eight men, and two children.’
Eleven of the bodies had been buried in a mass grave.