Petrol station fire in Ghana kills 175 people

A massive fire at a petrol station in Ghana's capital, Accra, has left 175 people dead and many more injured, officials say.

The fire occurred on Wednesday night following two days of heavy rain that flooded city streets and left many residents without power. The petrol station exploded when floodwaters swept stored oil towards a fire in a nearby house, according to a fire official. Many of the dead had been sheltering from downpours at the petrol station.

Flooding "caused the diesel and petrol to flow away from the gas station, and fire from a nearby house led to the explosion", the official said. The wet weather also hampered the relief effort as emergency services struggled to reach the blaze, the BBC reports.

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President John Mahama described the fire as "catastrophic" and "almost unprecedented" and declared three days of mourning.

Many buildings in Accra are built on waterways – a factor that is thought to have contributed to the disaster. In the wake of the explosion, Mahama pledged to stop all such construction. "I think that the time has come for us to remove houses out of water and the public should understand that it is necessary to save everybody else," the president said.

Graphic footage was broadcast on Ghanaian television of corpses being loaded onto the back of a pickup truck.

"Many people took shelter under a shed at the station during a severe rain across the country and got trapped when the explosion happened," Michael Plange, who lives near the petrol station, told Associated Press.

As Accra struggles to cope with the flooding, the city's authorities are under pressure to declare a state of emergency, The Guardian reports.

Britain's high commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin, took to Twitter to express his sorrow.

"Desperately sad to hear of the large number of deaths in the tragic fire at a filling station in Accra last night. Our deepest condolences", Benjamin wrote.