Three people were killed after a jerry can of petrol exploded at a house in Munuki suburb in Juba on Sunday night.

They were a family: a mother and her two young children.

“They were filling the container with fuel inside the room. While they were filling, I think the torch they were using in the process was not lighting well,” Joseph Kondemenes, relative, explained.

“So, she told her little son, who has died, that ‘try to light for us the candle’. The boy lit the candle. After he lit the candle, the fuel caught fire.”

The two children died instantly, while their mother, who was injured in the explosion, died at the Juba Teaching Hospital today.