Today was another sad day in Sierra Leone as over one hundred victims of Friday’s fuel tanker accident at Wellington , near Freetown, were buried in a mass funeral ceremony at a graveyard at Bolima, Waterloo where victims of Ebola were interred about five years ago.
President Maada Bio and a galaxy of government officials attended the state funeral , with the band of the Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces providing solemn music as hundreds of tearful people, including relatives of the deceased , watched.
According to reports, 115 dead bodies in all were buried . Among the 115 bodies, 70 were unidentified because of the nature of the burns the sustained.
It was a solemn day in a nation not unaccustomed to such mass funerals as after the mass casualty events of the 1999 rebel invasion of Freetown, the Ebola plague in 2015 and the Freetown mudslide in 2016.
The Mayor of Freetown wrote the following :
With a heavy heart I joined HE the President, Rtd Brig Julius Maada Bio, heads of various ministries, my colleague at WARD-C, Kasho J Holland-Cole and Councillors of FCC & WARD-C, the NDMA, the inter-religious council, well wishers and most importantly relatives of those we lost to the Wellington explosion at an inter religious funeral ceremony this evening. The ceremony took place at the Bolima Cemetery at Waterloo, the burial site where the 2014/2015 Ebola victims and the 14th August 2017 mudslide victims were also laid rest. #FreetownMourns
