Lagos - Eighteen people were killed in an explosion as they were siphoning off fuel from a fractured pipeline in Nigeria, it was reported yesterday.
The blast, the latest in a series of such explosions that have left hundreds dead in the past six weeks alone, happened on Saturday at Ekorinim, near Calabar, in Cross River State.
Officials of the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation said up to 2,000 people were at the site, scooping up fuel in buckets, when the blast occurred. Two years ago 1,082 people were killed in the largest single blast of a pipeline fractured by fuel black marketeers.
