A truck carrying highly flammable chemicals blew up after
colliding with another vehicle in northern Mexico, killing at least
34 people, including three reporters at the scene, state and
federal officials said.
Authorities said the two vehicles crashed into each other on
Sunday evening on a busy highway, drawing a crowd of curious
onlookers as well as a small army of police, soldiers, emergency
officials and journalists.
Shortly after the crowd arrived, the wreckage caught fire, and
the chemicals blew up, sending a ball of fire into the sky that
consumed nearby cars and left a 3-by-15-meter crater in the
concrete, said Maximo Alberto Neri Lopez, a federal police
official.
He initially reported 37 dead, but lowered that number after a
more thorough count found that some bodies, difficult to identify,
were counted twice. He also said more than 150 people were
injured.
The force of the explosion blew out the windows of a passenger
bus half a kilometer away.
The dead included three newspaper reporters from the nearby city
of Monclova, said Luis Horacio de Hoyos of the Coahuila state
Attorney-General's Office.
It was unclear if the chemical truck's driver was among those
dead. Early reports said he might have fled the scene.
The truck that exploded in Coahuila didn't appear to be headed
for the US. It had recently left an Orica Ltd explosives plant in
nearby Monclova and was headed west to Coquimatlan, Colima, said a
federal police officer who wasn't authorized to give his name.
A woman who answered the phone at Orica's offices in Monclova
said all company officials were at a meeting, and she could not
comment. The company is based in Australia and has operations in 50
countries across six continents.
President Felipe Calderon said the federal government would work
with local authorities in the tragedy's aftermath.
"I want to send my heartfelt condolences to the families of
those who lost their lives in this horrible accident," he said in
New Delhi, India, where he was attending the inauguration of a
museum exposition.
Coahuila state has a large mining industry, most of it in
coal.
"Part of the trailer caught fire after the crash and that's
where the explosion came from," said state Governor Humberto
Moreira.
"Reporters who were taking photographs died there as well as
emergency workers and drivers who stopped to help," Moreira
said.
The trailer-truck was carrying 25 tons of a derivative of the
volatile ammonium nitrate chemical used for fertilizers, civil
protection authorities said. The media had earlier said it had been
carrying explosives.
(China Daily September 11, 2007)
