BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan -- An overturned oil tanker burst into flames in Pakistan on Sunday, killing 153 people who had rushed to the scene of the highway accident to gather leaking fuel, a hospital official said.
Dr. Javed Iqbal at Bahawalpur's Victoria Hospital in south Punjab said the latest deaths occurred at a hospital in Multan where some of the 50 critically injured, many of whom suffered extensive burns, had been taken.
The death toll could rise further, said Dr. Mohammad Baqar, a senior rescue official in the area. There were dozens of other injuries of varying degrees, he said.
Pakistan news channels showed black smoke billowing skyward and scores of burned bodies, as well as rescue officials speeding the injured to hospitals and army helicopters ferrying the wounded. At least 73 motorcycles and several cars were destroyed in the blast.
Saznoor Ahmad, 30, whose two cousins were killed in the fire, said the crowd of people screamed as the flames engulfed them.
"The fire moved so fast," he said. When the flames subsided, the field was strewn with bodies and the charred shells of motorcycles.
As the wounded cried out for help, residents wandered through the area looking for loved ones.
Zulkha Bibi was searching for her two sons.
"Someone should tell me about my beloved sons, where are they? Are they alive or are they no longer in this world? Please tell me," she pleaded.
The disaster came on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. While Saudi Arabia and most other Muslim countries celebrated the holiday Sunday, Pakistanis will mark it today.
The tanker was traveling from the southern port city of Karachi to Lahore, the Punjab provincial capital, when the driver lost control and crashed on the national highway outside Bahawalpur, causing the tanker to overturn. Authorities were investigating what caused the driver to lose control.
What happened next is in dispute. Rana Mohammad Salim, deputy commissioner of Bahawalpur, said a loudspeaker atop a mosque alerted villagers to the leaking fuel. Makhdoom Syed Hassan Gillani, the National Assembly representative of Ahmedpur East, the small city in Punjab province where the disaster occurred, said the mosque made no such announcement.
But no matter how villagers found out, dozens of them raced to the site. Highway police moved to redirect traffic but couldn't stop the villagers, spokesman Imran Shah told a TV channel.
Muhammad Rizwan, a police official, said police had "kept on telling people to leave the crash site, but people wouldn't listen and more kept coming."
"We knew it was dangerous," Rizwan said, "and if there were more cars and bikes, the casualties would have been much higher."
"People brought bottles, pots, buckets and other home utensils," Gillani said. "Many people made several rounds and urged others to do the same." He said people had planned to use the fuel for themselves and also to sell.
Fuel is a high-value commodity in Pakistan, so even for those aware of the risks, the prospect of obtaining it for free was too powerful a lure to ignore.
"You can blame poverty 100 percent," Gillani said. "It was poverty. It was greed. It was ignorance."
The tanker carried an estimated 5,500 gallons of fuel that was gushing onto the road. For about an hour, men, women and children from nearby villages, as well as some passers-by who pulled over in their cars and motorbikes, collected the fuel.
Abdul Rashid, 30, one of those injured, said he and a friend had joined in.
"I parked my bike by the road and waited while my friend went to collect the fuel," said Rashid, who had burns on one hand and a leg. "We did not have any bottles, so we asked people and got one. The bottle was small, so my friend went thrice to collect the fuel."
Then the truck caught fire and exploded. One official suggested that a spark from a passing vehicle had probably caused the blast, but news reports quoted witnesses blaming a lit cigarette tossed by a passer-by.
Rashid said he did not know what had happened to his friend after the fire broke out.
The devastation swept through several poor settlements near the crash site.
"It is a horrible tragedy," Gillani said, adding, "In one house, all eight men of the family died due to the fire."
Officials said that when the fire started, the mosque loudspeaker called on villagers to help put it out.
Mohammed Salim ran toward the smoke carrying buckets of water and sand, but said the heat was too intense to reach those in need.
"I could hear people screaming but I couldn't get to them," he said.
Abdul Malik, a police officer who was also among the first to arrive, described a "horrible scene."
"I have never seen anything like it in my life. Victims trapped in the fireball. They were screaming for help," he said.
When the fire subsided, "we saw bodies everywhere, so many were just skeletons. The people who were alive were in really bad shape," he said.
Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab, expressed his grief over the loss of life, said an aide, Salman Sufi. Sufi added that the driver of the tanker had avoided serious injury because the crash had taken place "long before" the explosion, and a provincial government spokesman said the driver had been taken into custody, Reuters reported.
Iqbal said a state of emergency was declared at the Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur. Within 15 minutes of the fire, the hospital had called in extra doctors and nurses, and had formed a team to handle the emergency.
After being stabilized, 22 patients were transferred by C-130 aircraft to hospitals in the provincial capital, Lahore. Some of the most badly burned were evacuated by army helicopters to Multan, about 60 miles away.
Many of the dead were burned beyond recognition, Baqar said, and will have to be identified using DNA testing.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was in London on a private visit, cut short his stay and was returning to Pakistan, officials said. Imran Khan, the country's most prominent opposition politician, called the accident "a national tragedy of epic proportions."
Information for this article was contributed by Iram Asim and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Salman Masood and Daniyal Hassan of The New York Times.
A Section on 06/26/2017