Nigerians traded recriminations today over who was responsible for the deaths of 269 people burned alive in a fuel explosion in the heart of Lagos, the country's teeming economic capital.
Many at the scene of the disaster blamed the government for allowing poverty to reach such depths in Africa's top oil producing nation that ordinary people were ready to risk their lives for a bucket of petrol.
Most those killed were local residents who went to scoop up the petrol in plastic containers after an armed gang punctured the underground pipeline overnight to siphon fuel into road tankers.
"The number of dead is confirmed at 269. We have retrieved all the bodies," said Abiodun Orebiyi, secretary-general of the Nigerian Red Cross. Another 160 people were taken to two hospitals in Lagos suffering from burns, another Red Cross official said.
Shortly after the blast, hundreds of bodies, most burned beyond recognition, were scattered on the ground next to a ramshackle car workshop and a saw mill in the densely populated Abule Egba district.
Some corpses lay rigid on the earth - arms and legs thrust awkwardly in the air - their clothes and skin burned off by the blast. Others were reduced to ash.
It took firefighters equipped with leaking water hoses about six hours to extinguish the flames as hundreds of people came to watch.
In the absence of an ambulance service, one group of volunteers loaded charred corpses into an estate car operated by the Lagos road safety authority.
Pipeline tapping is a common practice in Nigeria, where a majority of the country's 130 million people live in poverty despite their country's role as Africa's leading crude oil producer.
Petrol shortages in the country has spawned a vigorous trade in black market fuel and long queues have formed at most filling stations over the past few weeks.
"You can say fuel scarcity caused this. Or poverty," said Folasade Olapade, an environmental officer said.
Police chief Sunday Ehindero arrived at the blast site today said the vandals were to blame and he called on Nigerians to change their attitude towards criminals.
Local media said police were alerted to the fuel spill before the explosion, but were chased away by the crowds seeking their share of the "Christmas bonus".
President Olusegun Obasanjo said in a statement he was distraught at the unnecessary loss of life particularly as the government had been repeatedly issued warnings on the dangers of tampering with pipelines.
Earlier this year, 150 people died in a similar incident to yesterday's blast which is the worst since a 1998 pipeline fire which killed 1,500.
United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan expressed his condolences and called "for a review of the country's fuel supply management, as well as a thorough regional review of risks that could lead to other environmental or technological disasters in West Africa".
Pope Benedict XVI sent a condolence message.