Blast kills 96 sheltering from flooding

An explosion at a petrol station in Ghana’s capital and flooding caused by torrential rains killed around 150 people, President John Mahama said yesterday, marking the worst disaster to strike the West African country in more than a decade.

Around 96 people who sought shelter from floods overnight at the state-owned GOIL gas station near a busy downtown intersection were killed, authorities said. Thousands more were made homeless in the citywide flooding, officials said.

The incidents expose the weakness of Accra’s infrastructure, which has failed to keep pace with population growth after years of rapid economic expansion. It is vulnerable to storms that wreak havoc as poor drainage leads to flooding.

Witnesses said workers struggling home through the storm with roads closed and buses not running were victims of the blast, the force of which gave few a chance to escape.

‘‘It was an explosive fire and so the people sheltering at the filling station did not have an opportunity to escape,’’ fire brigade spokesman Prince Billy Anaglate told reporters.

People were burnt beyond recognition where they stood under the station’s awning, or trapped and incinerated in the wreckage of cars and minivans on the forecourt. A fuel leak caused the accident that also destroyed nearby buildings.

Mahama announced three days of national mourning.

It was Ghana’s worst disaster since more than 120 people died in May 2001 in a stampede at the national stadium during a football match, police said.