Reports reaching the desk of Africa Today News, New York has it that a suspected nitrate oxide gas leak in South Africa has caused the deaths of no fewer than 16 people.
The victims which included women and children – passed on from gas inhalation at an informal settlement in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.
Yesterday’s leak has been linked to illegal gold mining in the area.
Nitrate oxide gas is often used by illegal gold miners – known locally as zama zamas – to extract gold from soil stolen from abandoned mine shafts.
One of the gas cylinders was found leaking in Boksburg’s densely populated Angelo shanty town.
The victims were found within a 100m (328ft) radius of the scene.
Emergency service officials told newsmen that no one was taken to hospital.
But they fear more bodies could be found overnight as search and rescue teams continue their work.
This tragedy comes just six months after a gas tanker explosion on Christmas Eve which claimed 41 lives in the same town.
In another report, the secretary general of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress Party (ANC) has said the country could become a failed state as incessant power cuts threaten to cripple the economy.
Fikile Mbalula told reporers that ‘if certain things are not resolved, we will become a failed state, but we are not journeying towards that direction’.
In an exclusive interview with Stephen Sackur for the BBC’s Hardtalk programme, Mr. Mbalula said that South Africa’s economy ‘has been battered’.
He said while external forces such as the global economy, the impact of Covid, and war in Ukraine all played a role, the blame also lay partly with ‘some of our own weaknesses in terms of managing the economy well’.