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Goods worth over N50 million were yesterday gutted by mid night fire while three people sustained various degrees of injury at the popular Electronics International Market Onitsha, the commercial nerve center of Anambra State. The cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained as at the time of filing this report but the inferno was said to have started at about  3.am  from one of the  shops inside the market.

According to an eye witness, “immediately we discovered that there was an outbreak of  fire in one of the shops, I alerted the vigilante commander, Mr. Jideofor Okacha and we started making contacts  for help but all efforts were in vain as none of the fire service stations contacted responded  except  Okpoko Fire Service Station”. Speaking with newsmen, the vigilante commander stressed the need for a control switch to be installed in the market, adding that on rushing to the shop with other security operatives,  thick smoke was seen bellowing from the said shop.

“We tried to break the shop to stop the fire with our fire extinguisher, but to no avail and the security men from one of the new generation banks located inside the market brought their extinguisher but to no avail. Instead, the fire escalated, touching the double shop apartment and other near-by shops in the market. As it went out of control, we called the Okpoko Fire Service men at about 4.am and they responded promptly with their vehicle and put out the fire.”

He said that initially, the effort of the Okpoko fire service men was resisted by the ravaging inferno. The water in their tank soon finished and they rushed back to their office and came back almost immediately and emptied their tank on the inferno. “Nobody died because it was in the  midnight and people were still sleeping but some of  the  security  men with me from a new generation bank sustained various degrees of  injury  as we tried  to stop the fire”.

In another news, more than 60 people have lost their lives in the same south-eastern Nigeria after a fuel tanker crashed into a busy bus station and caught fire, according to officials. Eyewitnesses account has it that the driver lost control of the tanker as it was going downhill in the city of Onitsha. Afterwards, it ran into people and snuffed the lives out of about 60 people, who were around the scene going about their businesses when the incident occurred.

Rescue workers say 12 other vehicles also caught fire in Sunday's incident, which police say was just an accident. In 2012 more than 100 people died in a blaze as they tried to get oil from an overturned tanker in southern Nigeria, which was earlier involved in an accident Gruesome images of the aftermath of the Onitsha crash show some of the burnt corpses on the ground besides the charred vehicle shells. Dozens of people who were wounded in the incident have been taken to hospital and they are being treated in two hospitals in Onitsha.