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DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

About 230 people have died in eastern Congo after a tanker truck overturned and exploded in an area where locals had gathered to watch the Soccer World Cup Friday, a Red Cross official said Saturday.

The blast is one the deadliest to date in Africa, where explosions caused by fuel leaks from accidents or punctured pipelines often claim lives when locals rush to scoop up spilled fuel. The tragedy took place in Sud-Kivu, a region of Congo that has suffered from years of conflict.

Speaking to Dow Jones Newswires, Francois Moreillon, head of the Red Cross sub-delegation in charge of Sud-Kivu, said, “we have now counted more than 210 dead [bodies found in the disaster site] and about 20 people died of their wounds” subsequently. “The death toll could mount further,” Moreillon said, as there are about 50 severely wounded.

He said there was a large concentration of people in the accident area, in stalls that served as cinemas to watch the World Cup. Africans have followed the World Cup with much enthusiasm as it was held on the continent for the first time. The Congolese had gathered ahead of a match between Ghana–the African team with a strong chance to win the cup–and Uruguay, which later won the game. After the truck overturned, “locals ran to scoop the fuel,” he said. “They believed they could get an opportunity out of it, but it ended up in tragedy.”

In October 1998, more than 1,000 people died in Nigeria’s southern Delta state, when a pipeline exploded as people tried to steal oil. Between 2000 and 2006, three other accidents killed nearly 600 people in Nigeria.

Eastern Congo is one of the regions in Africa most hit by conflict. The United Nations peacekeeping force in Congo is the world’s largest, with an annual budget of $1.35 billion. Moreillon said the population in the area “has gone through a succession of conflicts and remain very vulnerable.”

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