100 killed, 200 injured in dump site explosion in Benin

At least 100 people were killed and more than 200 injured in an explosion at a waste-burning site in Benin’s Cotonou, the media reported on Friday.

 The blast which occurred on Thursday  resulted from rotten flour which did not burn off fully at the landfill site about 20 km north of Cotonou, Xinhua news agency reported.

The high number of casualties was caused as a crowd of people rushed to the venue to sift through piles of expired food that had been dumped .

In much of West Africa safety standards on industrial and waste management sites is poor. Ordinary rubbish is dumped alongside electronic and toxic waste or flammable materials. Reuters reports
And unlike in the West, where the only people on such sites are waste management staff, poverty forces the poorest West Africans to sift through others’ waste in search of subsistence.

According to Reuters, a local councillor, Augustin Dianou, said that gasoline was being used to burn some of the food waste, which had caused the blast as people were filling sacks with discarded flour.
The report added that death toll could further climb because some of the injured were in critical conditions due to severe burning.