Pipeline Blast Kills At Least 66 People in Mexico

Date: 19 January 2019 - 21:35

News ID: ۶۲۲۲۱

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- The governor of Mexico’s Hidalgo state, Omar Fayad, said on Saturday that 66 people had been killed and 76 injured in a pipeline explosion on Friday evening.
The blast at the pipeline, which was ruptured by suspected fuel thieves, sent flames shooting into the skies in the municipality of Tlahuelilpan in central Mexico.
Shortly before midnight, Public Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said the fire had been put out, and that the government would need time to establish the final death toll.
Images published on broadcaster Televisa showed people with severe burns from the blast as the government sent in ambulances and doctors to treat the victims.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has launched a major crackdown on rampant fuel theft, which the government said cost the country more than $3 billion last year.
The explosion was one of the worst in recent history in a country that has suffered hundreds of illegal ruptures to its network of oil and gas pipelines.
"I urge the entire population not to be complicit in fuel theft,” Fayad said on Twitter. "Apart from being illegal, it puts your life and those of your families at risk.”
The ruptured pipeline was near the Tula refinery of state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), which in a statement blamed the incident on an illegal tap.
Separate television footage showed the pipeline gushing a fountain of fuel earlier in the day and dozens of people at the site trying to fill buckets and plastic containers.
Separately, Pemex said on Friday evening it was also dealing with a separate pipeline rupture by suspected fuel thieves in San Juan del Rio in the neighboring state of Queretaro. There was no danger to the population, the firm added.
The president’s crackdown on theft has significant public backing, though his decision to turn off pipelines to thwart the thieves disrupted fuel supply in central Mexico and raised concern that the shortages could damage the economy.
Some users of social media responded to the explosion with anger, saying the fuel thieves only had themselves to blame.