Nairobi: More than 30 people died when a petrol tanker crashed into other vehicles and burst into flames outside the town of Naivasha in Kenya late on Saturday night, officials said.

‘Over 30 people confirmed dead, many injured and over 11 vehicles burnt at a road traffic accident along Nairobi-Naivasha,’ Pius Masai of Kenya’s National Disaster Management Unit said in a statement early Sunday.

Kenya’s Red Cross said the driver had lost control of the fuel tanker which then crashed into other vehicles and ‘burst into flames’.

The accident occurred at Karai on the busy Nairobi-Nakuru highway, the main cross-country road leading from Kenya’s capital to the west of the country and on to Uganda. Around 11 vehicles are thought to have been involved in the fire.

Witnesses described a fireball engulfing the vehicles with passengers inside.

‘It’s a terrible incident, people are burnt, some in their cars and others as they tried to escape,’ said a police officer on the scene.

Given the scale of the disaster it is expected that the death toll may rise. The accident comes as Kenya is in the throes of a nationwide doctors’ strike.