Scores of people have died after a petrol pipeline explosion and fire in Kenya's capital, Nairobi

The blast took place in the city's Lunga Lunga industrial area, and police and troops cordoned off the area as firefighters battled fierce flames in the surrounding shanty town. A Red Cross official, Pamela Indiaka, said that at least 75 bodies had been recovered. Some reports put the toll at more than 100 dead. More than 110 people were injured. The pipeline runs through the densely populated Sinai slum area between Nairobi's city center and the airport. Reports suggest that the blast may have been sparked by a cigarette butt being thrown into an open sewer that was filling with fuel. The fuel had leaked into a storm drain from the Nairobi-Mombasa pipeline, the Kenya Pipeline Company said in a statement. Residents said that the spill had prompted many people to rush and collect leaking fuel. Parts of bodies littered the remains of burning shacks for some 1,000 feet around the site of the blast, locals said. Some of the shacks were built on top of the pipeline, residents say. Bodies were also seen floating in a nearby river, into which burns victims had reportedly leaped after catching fire. TV images showed survivors staggering around in a daze, with skin peeling off their faces and arms, and schoolchildren running in all directions. One of the survivors, Jane Mumbua, said that many people were close to the pipeline at the time of the blast. Resident Joseph Mwangi, 34, discovered the remains of his two small children in the burnt wreckage of his home. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who visited the scene of the blast, described what he had seen as shocking and terrible. Richard Leresian, the head of the Kenyatta National Hospital, said that 112 people had been brought to the hospital, most of them with severe burns. He said that the hospital was appealing for blankets and blood donations. There have been other deaths in Kenya involving people collecting leaking fuel. More than 100 people died in Molo, western Kenya, in 2009 after a fire on an overturned tanker.