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“The whole place, the whole community, is gone,” Isaac Dsamani, municipal chief executive of the rural area, told a news crew.
Police urged residents to move away from the rubble, asking towns in the area to open schools and churches to the people who lost their homes.
Initially, police reported 17 deaths but revised the toll down to 13 on Friday, saying four had been mistaken for dead. After a 24-hour rescue operation, police said, the wounded were taken to medical centers.
Ghana, one of the continent’s top producers of gold, is home to several major excavation sites. Companies based in the United States, Australia, South Africa and Canada all run gold mines in the nation. The truck that exploded was on its way to a mine owned by Canadian firm Kinross, a spokesperson confirmed to reporters.
After the incident near the mining town of Bogoso on Thursday, the truck driver jumped out and warned people to run, Dsamani said. Some of the victims had gathered to inspect the collision. Many had been in their homes.
“It is a truly sad, unfortunate and tragic incident,” Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, tweeted, “and I extend, on behalf of Government, deep condolences to the families of the deceased, and I wish the injured a speedy recovery.”
Ghana has endured deadly blasts over the years. In 2015, 150 people died when a leak at a gas station triggered an explosion that set ablaze a row of businesses in the capital, Accra.
Advocates across the region have called for safer ways to transport flammable materials, as well as awareness campaigns on what to do when trucks hauling dangerous substances get into accidents.
Oil tanker blasts, for instance, have killed hundreds of people in African countries in recent years. Crowds tend to form around such accidents in the moments before they blow up. In several tragedies, people have died trying to bottle the spilled fuel.
Such was the case in Sierra Leone in November when an oil truck explosion killed 98 and overwhelmed the nation’s hospitals with burn victims.
Explosions in Niger and Tanzania in 2019 claimed a total of 165 lives. A similar blast in Kenya last summer killed 13.
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