LAGOS, Nigeria — A tanker truck exploded outside an industrial plant in rural southeastern Nigeria, killing dozens of people who had lined up for gas to cook their Christmas meals, the authorities announced on Friday.  The explosion occurred on Thursday afternoon in the city of Nnewi, in Anambra State, according to Chuma Ibeabuchi, the local secretary of the Nigerian Red Cross Society. The inferno sent plumes of acrid black smoke skyward, and it took more than three hours to extinguish.  A number of bodies were charred beyond recognition, and dozens of survivors were hospitalized with severe burns. The government said that “tens of people” had been killed, though The Associated Press and Reuters, citing local observers, said that as many as 100 may have died.  One survivor, Emeka Uju, said that “people just burned like animals.” Another witness, Christopher Nwachukwu, told reporters that the blast may have been caused when employees started dispensing cooking gas from the truck without waiting for it to cool first. “This is a bleak Christmas,” he said.  President Muhammadu Buhari, through a spokesman, said he was “greatly shaken and shocked by such large-scale loss of human lives in a single-industrial accident,” which he said had devastated families “who were looking forward to a joyous Christmas celebration.”  The statement added: “My heart and prayers go out to these grieving families at this difficult and painful moment.”  Poor regulation and decrepit infrastructure has been blamed for series of explosions by tanker trucks on Nigeria’s roads. A deadly explosion two weeks ago, involving a gas tanker that fell off a bridge in central Lagos, the country’s economic capital, snarled traffic for hours.  Deadly fuel fires have been a chronic affliction in Nigeria, Africa’s leading oil exporter. In 2008, more than 100 people were reported killed when a construction vehicle struck an oil pipeline on the outskirts of Lagos. In 2007, at least 45 people were killed in Lagos when fuel they were siphoning from a buried pipeline caught fire. In 2006, another pipeline ruptured by thieves caught fire, killing about 260. One of the worst was a pipeline explosion in 1998 in southern Nigeria that killed 1,500.  There were widely diverging casualty tallies in the hours immediately after the Anambra inferno.  A police spokesman in Anambra State said that six people outside the perimeter of the gas plant, which is owned by a conglomerate called the Chicason Group, had died, and that two others were killed in a nearby building. He said that six others were hospitalized with injuries.  Asked about the reports of as many as 100 deaths, the police spokesman, Ali Alphonsus Okechukwu, insisted that the figure was “very wrong,” but said he could not offer a more precise figure.  “I have been to the scene of the incident, many people were not affected because the gas plant is situated in an isolated area, so only few people there were killed by the explosion,” he said.  Mr. Ibeabuchi, the local Red Cross official, said he had seen four bodies at the scene, and that four injured people had been taken to the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital in Nnewi.  Nnewi is best known among Nigerians as the hometown of a famous secessionist, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who from 1967 to 1970 led the breakaway Republic of Biafra, which ended when the movement was defeated, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.  The Chicason Group, produces vegetable oil, motor spare parts and other varied products. Officials of the company were not available to respond to questions.  Mr. Buhari extended his condolences over what he called “this unfortunate tragedy on Christmas Eve”, adding that “my heart and prayers go out to these grieving families at this difficult and painful moment.”  Tony Iyare reported from Lagos, and Austin Ramzy from Hong Kong. Sewell Chan contributed reporting from London, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
The blast occurred as people gathered to buy cooking gas to prepare Christmas meals. The president said “tens of people” were killed, but reporters said the toll was much higher.