Fuel Pipeline Blaze In Mexico Kills At Least 66

TLAHUELILPAN, Mexico, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jan, 2019 ) :An explosion and fire in central Mexico killed at least 66 people after hundreds converged on the site of an illegal fuel-line tap to gather gasoline amid a government crackdown on fuel theft, officials said.

"The toll that we have until a few minutes ago... is 66 dead, while 76 are injured," the Hidalgo state governor, Omar Fayad, said on Saturday.

First reports had put the toll far lower, at 21 dead. The blast occurred near Tlahuelilpan, a town of 20,000 people about an hour's drive north of Mexico City.

Forensic specialists in white suits could be seen Saturday working among the charred, blackened corpses at the scene.

With soldiers guarding the scene, several people began stepping gingerly through the disaster site to try to identify missing relatives among charred bodies frozen in the positions in which they fell.

The pungent smell of fuel hung in the air. Fragments of burnt clothing were strewn through the brush.

Upon learning on Friday that fuel traffickers had punctured the pipeline, an army unit arrived and attempted to block the area but was unable to contain hundreds of civilians who swarmed in to collect the spilled gasoline in jerrycans and buckets, witnesses said.

The soldiers had moved away from the pipeline to avoid confrontation with the crowd when the blast occurred.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist, traveled to the scene early Saturday.

He did not fault the soldiers, saying, "It is not easy to impose order on a crowd." He vowed to continue fighting the growing problem of fuel theft.

"I am deeply saddened by the suffering in Tlahuelilpan," Lopez Obrador wrote on Twitter. He called on his "whole government" to extend assistance.

Video taken in the aftermath showed screaming people fleeing the scene as an enormous fire lit up the night sky.

"I went just to see what was happening, and then the explosion happened. I rushed to help people," Fernando Garcia, 47, told AFP. "I had to claw through pieces of people who had already been burned to bits." The tragedy comes during a highly publicized federal government war on fuel theft, a problem that cost Mexico an estimated $3 billion in 2017.

Acting attorney general Alejandro Gertz described the latest disaster as "intentional" because "someone caused that leak and the fire was a consequence of the crime." But he acknowledged that investigators would be hampered by the fact that "the people closest to the explosion died." Federal and state firefighters and ambulances run by state oil company Pemex rushed to help victims with burns and take the injured to hospitals.

Local medical facilities struggled to cope with the flood of arriving victims, said AFP correspondents at the scene.

The fire had been brought under control by around midnight Friday, the security ministry said.

Pemex said it was also responding to another fire at a botched pipeline tap in the central state of Queretaro, though in that case there were no victims.

Mexico is regularly rocked by deadly explosions at illegal pipeline taps, a dangerous but lucrative business whose players include powerful drug cartels and corrupt Pemex insiders.

Fayad said that two hours after the pipeline was punctured, "we were informed that there had been an explosion" and the flames "were consuming everything around." About 15 oil pipeline explosions and fires causing more than 50 fatalities each have occurred around the world since 1993. Most were in Nigeria, where in 1998 more than 1,000 people died in such a blast. A fire after a pipeline rupture in Brazil killed more than 500 people in 1984.

- Rampant fuel theft - The tragedy comes as anti-corruption crusader Lopez Obrador presses implementation of a controversial fuel theft prevention plan.

The government has shut off major pipelines until they can be fully secured and deployed the army to guard Pemex production facilities.

But the strategy to fight the problem led to severe gasoline and diesel shortages across much of the country, including Mexico City, forcing people to queue for hours -- sometimes days -- to fill up their vehicles.

The president, who took office on December 1, has vowed to keep up the fight and asked Mexicans to be patient.

At the scene, some locals blamed the shortages for the tragedy.

"A lot of people arrived with their jerrycans because of the gasoline shortages we've had," said Martin Trejo, 55, who was searching for his son, one of those who had gone to collect the leaking fuel.

He also lashed out at the army for failing to stop the looters.

"These lives would have been saved if they had done their jobs to remove people and not let them get close. They never did anything." Tanker trucks are being used to deliver fuel, but experts say there are not nearly enough of them.

Mexican bank Citibanamex estimated Wednesday that the shortages would cost Latin America's second-largest economy around $2 billion, "if conditions return to normal in the coming days."The roots of the fuel theft problem run deep in Mexico, where the practice -- known locally as "huachicoleo," or moonshining -- is big business for some communities.