Victims included people who had flocked to collect fuel leaking from the ruptured vehicle, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of the port city, said in a post on Facebook, although that post was later edited to remove the reference.

"We've got so many casualties, burnt corpses," said Brima Bureh Sesay, head of the National Disaster Management Agency, in a video from the scene shared online. "It's a terrible, terrible accident."

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Videos shared online shortly after the explosion showed people running through clouds of thick smoke as large fires lit up the night sky. Reuters was not able immediately to verify the images, but witnesses described the horror.

"We are all in shock. A lady I had just bought bread from died. A lovely woman. I can’t get over this grief," said Abdul Kabia, crying at the crash site surrounded by mangled vehicles.

HOSPITAL OVERWHELMED

The crash provided a major challenge for Freetown's health service already creaking from years of underfunding. The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic gutted the country's ranks of medical staff, 250 of whom died, and the system has not recovered.