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NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan police officials said at least 73 people were killed on Monday after a leaking pipeline exploded in a crowded slum. Witnesses said a large crowd had gathered to recover the leaking fuel and burned to death in the explosion and ensuing fire.
The cause of the explosion, which erupted in a slum called Sinai in the industrial area of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, has not yet been determined. A police spokesman, Charles Owino, told Reuters that the fuel appeared to have ignited after a cigarette was tossed into the open sewer that flows through the slum.
Television images and photographs showed a horrific scene of charred shacks and smoldering human remains. Residents told The Associated Press that the slum structures had been built right up against the pipeline. The fire burned with such heat that some of the remains were reduced to little more than bones.
Kenyan police officers had shut several roads leading into the slum and fire fighters were struggling to control the blaze on Monday afternoon.
The scene was similar to one that occurred in early 2009 in the city of Molo, when more than 50 people died as they tried to recover spilled fuel from an oil truck that had crashed
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..nytimes.com/2011/09/13/world/africa/13kenya.html