Sapele - Badly burned survivors of a Nigerian pipeline fire in which over 700 people died are returning to hospitals they fled for fear of prosecution for sabotage or pilfering fuel, health officials said yesterday.
"Several victims with severe burns who had signed off from hospitals are now coming back after reassurance they would not be arrested," a health official said in the small town of Sapele, near the scene of the disaster last Sunday. Local "town-criers" had been employed to go into remote villages to persuade fleeing victims to come out of hiding to receive treatment.
Flames had engulfed some 2,000 people scavenging petrol from a burst pipeline of the state-owned oil company. More than 400 victims of the fire, which has not yet completely burnt out, have been buried in mass graves near the site of the disaster, blamed by officials of the state oil company on sabotage.
Emergency medical teams of the Red Cross, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have been providing assistance to hospitals in Warri, Sapele and Eku filled with survivors with varying degrees of burns. Doctors expect the death toll to rise.
Nigeria's military ruler, Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar, visited the disaster site and promised to pick up the medical bills of the injured.