Tlahuelilpan (Mexico): An explosion and fire in central Mexico has killed at least 73 people after hundreds swarmed to the site of an illegal fuel line tap to gather gasoline amid a government crackdown on fuel theft, officials said here Saturday.
Hidalgo state governor Omar Fayad announced that the toll had increased to 73 after the discovery of five additional bodies. Initially he had said that the number of people dead were 20, but had added that he had expected the numbers to rise.
The blast – which Fayad said injured 74 people – occurred near Tlahuelilpan, a town of 20,000 people about an hour’s drive north of Mexico City.
As soldiers guarded the devastated, still-smoking scene, forensic specialists in white suits worked among the blackened corpses – many frozen in the unnatural positions in which they had fallen – and grim-eyed civilians stepped cautiously along in a desperate search for missing relatives.
When the forensic workers began attempting to load corpses into vans to be transported to funeral homes, some 30 villagers tried to stop them. They demanded their relatives’ bodies, saying funeral homes were too expensive. The bodies were ultimately taken to a morgue, authorities said.
Friday, when authorities heard that fuel traffickers had punctured the pipeline, an army unit of about 25 soldiers arrived and attempted to block off the area, Defence Secretary Luis Crescencio Sandoval told reporters.
But the soldiers were unable to contain the estimated 700 civilians – including entire families – who swarmed in to collect the spilled gasoline in jerrycans and buckets, witnesses said.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who took office only weeks ago, travelled to the scene early Saturday.
He did not blame the soldiers. “The attitude of the army was correct. It is not easy to impose order on a crowd,” he said. He also 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 this agency. “I had to claw through pieces of people who had already been burned to bits.”
The tragedy comes during a highly publicised federal government war on fuel theft, a problem that cost Mexico an estimated $3 billion in 2017.
AFP