The victims of the Friday night explosion at an illegal refinery in a forest in Abaezi community in the state’s Ohaji Egbema Local Government Area will be buried in mass by the Imo State Government.
Ifeanyi Nnaji, the state’s Head of Operations for the National Emergency Management Agency, said the mass burial would be handled by the state’s ministries of Petroleum Resources and Environment.
The charred bodies of the over 100 dead had been retrieved, he said, and the state government was planning a mass funeral.
None of the victims had been identified, according to the NEMA official, because they had been burned beyond recognition.
Nnaji said, “The state Ministry of Petroleum Resources and Environment will carry out a mass burial for the victims because their remains are already decomposing.
“It is a large market involving people from all parts of the country; and since they burnt beyond recognition, it is very difficult to identify them. A family just came and saw one body, which they said resembled one of their own and they carried it for burial according to traditional rites.”
