Forty-six soldiers have been killed in one of Nigeria's worst road accidents in recent years.
The accident has prompted the country's president to return home early from a trip abroad.
President Umaru Yar'Adua cut short his visit to Tanzania after a collision between a petrol tanker and an army convoy led to the deaths of the soldiers, who had just returned from an African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
The troops were in a convoy of seven vehicles returning to their unit in Monguno in northeastern Nigeria from the capital Abuja yesterday when the accident happened.
One of the vehicles collided with an oncoming petrol tanker.
Five soldiers were hospitalised with serious injuries.
The dead soldiers are to be given a state burial in Abuja tomorrow with flags flown at half-mast in all military establishments.
The troops had been deployed as part of a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in western Sudan's Darfur region.
