Nairobi, Feb. 3 -- If you ask Henry Kioko to describe the Thursday midnight tragedy when fire broke out in Embakasi, Nairobi, he can only come up with the biblical worst kind of fire: Hell-fire.

For him and the nearly 300 survivors, they cheated death that fateful night, and he believes it was only a miracle they made it out, after balls of fire rained on them.

"The Bible talks about Hell-fire. Well, I have never seen it but I am pretty sure what I saw last night is either much worse," he tells the Nation at the Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital.

Here, where a majority of the survivors were brought for treatment, Kioko is tossing and turning in so much pain with visibly big red wounds on his hands, head, back and feet, he says death stared at ...