LAGOS (AFP) - An explosion at an illegal oil refinery has killed at least 80 people in the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria, which has been devastated by decades of vandalism and illegal exploitation of hydrocarbons.
Police and emergency services said the explosion occurred on Friday evening at an illegal location between the oil states of Rivers and Imo.
"We found at least 80 bodies with signs of severe burns at the site," Ifianye Nagy of the National Emergency Agency at the scene told AFP, adding that the number could rise further.
"We learned that there are many dead bodies in the nearby bushes and forests, as a result of some illegal (refinery) operators and those responsible for them trying to escape to a safe place," he said.
Naji explained that a number of burnt cars and explosives used to collect stolen crude and petroleum products were scattered around the place.
Police confirmed that the explosion occurred at the site of an illegal refinery, where its operators and customers had gathered.
"Several bodies, burnt beyond recognition, lie on the ground, while the bodies of others who tried to escape hang from tree branches," said the director of the Center for Youth and Environmental Defense, Finface Dominamine.
Several local media reported that more than 100 people were killed in the explosion, which is a link in a long series of repeated similar incidents.
Nigeria is the largest oil-producing country in Africa, and exports an average of two million barrels per day, representing 90 percent of the country's export revenues.
According to sources from the official sector, the country loses about 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day due to sabotage and theft.
Illegal filtering of crude is a common practice in Nigeria's oil-rich south, where thieves sabotage oil pipelines to steal crude, which they refine and sell on the black market.
Most of the inhabitants of the Niger Delta suffer from poverty and accuse the big oil companies of polluting the region and not contributing to its development.
Decades of oil spills have destroyed mangrove forests and entire villages where fishing and farming were the main source of income.
The worst pipeline explosion in Nigeria occurred in October 1998 in the town of Jesi in the south of the country, killing more than 1,000 residents.
The government deployed the army to carry out large-scale operations to destroy illegal refineries in the Niger Delta, and to try to end the plundering of oil resources.
But the campaign has yielded scant results and hundreds of illegal refineries are still operating in the swamps and near the rivers that cross the region.
The head of the National Agency for Oil Spill Detection and Response, Idris Moussa, told AFP that an investigation had been launched to find out the cause of the explosion, which occurred on Friday.
"Investigations are underway and the fire that broke out after the explosion has been extinguished," he added.