He described that among the injured, “four are hospitalized in critical condition, eleven are stable” and the last, a minor, “is now fully conscious.”
A poison
When called around 8 p.m., emergency services diagnosed what initially appeared to be an explosion as a gas leak. A bottle of nitrate oxide was found at the scene. “When we arrived, we found dozens of people lying in the entire area due to inhalation of this poisonous gas,” the spokesperson said.
According to the first elements of the investigation, a leak from this cylinder poisoned them. “It would be a gas leak from a bottle, it would be nitrate oxide, a very toxic gas that affected the residents of this informal district of Boksburg,” explained William Ndladi.
“Preliminary information suggests that these people have used this gas in the context of illegal mining operations,” he told AFP. “Apparently underground miners used gas to extract gold from the ground.”
Illegal miners descending into abandoned mines
Rescuers, then scientific police, traversed the entire affected area late at night, a bric-a-brac of pitiful brick and corrugated iron cabins, AFP journalists noted at the scene. The slum is located at the base of an old abandoned mine.
South Africa, plagued by local unemployment, has thousands of illegal miners nicknamed “Jama Jamas” who often live in squats. Those who “try and try again”, in Zulu, go to abandoned mines, because they are often not profitable enough, and try to extract precious metals, stones or coal.
Boksburg, a middle-class suburb of Johannesburg, was hit by a 5-magnitude earthquake last month, believed to have been caused by Gruyere cheese from mines and shafts associated with mining operations in the area. No casualties were reported due to the earthquake.
Another gas tanker explosion in Boksburg on Christmas Eve killed 41 people. Amateur videos showed a large fireball erupting under a bridge adjacent to a hospital. The truck, probably too high to get there, was filled with 60,000 liters of LPG gas.
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