At least 13 people have died after a petrol tanker overturned and caught fire in western Kenya on Sunday night on the busy road between Kisumu and Busia. Many others were seriously burned and they include young children. The injured have been rushed to Gem Hospital. The driver tried to avoid a head on collision with another lorry. A lorry carrying milk was travelling from Busia, near the Ugandan border, to Kisumu when it collided with the petrol tanker going in the opposite direction. As common in the poor countries, people rushed to the scene with jerrycans to siphon off the fuel from the overturned tanker. Than it exploded engulfing those around in a fireball. It took two hours for firefighters to reach the scene, near the town of Malanga in Siaya County.
Images broadcast by Kenyan media showed the blazing tanker lighting up the night sky and in the morning following, crowds gaping at the twisted, smoldering wreckage. About 3,000 people die in road collisions in Kenya each year. There have been past cases where Kenyans who rushed to siphon fuel from tankers were involved in accidents, some fatal. In 2009, more than 100 people were killed when a petrol tanker overturned northwest of Nairobi.
