[Mr. Sharif cut short a private visit to London and returned to Pakistan on Monday, visiting survivors at a hospital in Bahawalpur. “We will get to the bottom of this matter,” he said during a televised news briefing. He said that investigators would look into whether the vehicle had been roadworthy and whether government agencies had failed to enforce regulations.]
By Salman Masood
 |
|
Emergency
workers examining the site of a fuel tanker explosion on Sunday
in
Ahmadpur East, a town in the Pakistani province of Punjab.
Credit
Iram Asim/Associated Press
|
ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — The death toll
from a fireball that consumed an overturned fuel truck in eastern Pakistan has
reached 157, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered a high-level inquiry on
Monday into what caused such a devastating loss of life.
The blaze in Punjab Province, which also left
at least 127 injured, has cast a pall of grief over Eid al-Fitr, the
celebration that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and has
raised stark questions about road safety and law enforcement.
Hundreds of people, including women and
children, had ignored police warnings and swarmed around an overturned tanker
early Sunday in the town of Ahmadpur East. They were using bottles, buckets and
pots to collect fuel gushing from the vehicle when the site was engulfed in an
enormous fireball.
Mr. Sharif cut short a private visit to
London and returned to Pakistan on Monday, visiting survivors at a hospital in
Bahawalpur. “We will get to the bottom of this matter,” he said during a
televised news briefing. He said that investigators would look into whether the
vehicle had been roadworthy and whether government agencies had failed to
enforce regulations.
The cause of the fire was still being
determined, officials said, but based on several witness accounts, they were
leaning toward the possibility that it had started when someone in the crowd
had tossed a lit cigarette.
There were contradictory reports about why so
many people had rushed to the truck to collect fuel.
Saleemullah, 40, who survived the fire
unhurt, said that he had been awakened by his wife early Sunday and told about
an announcement from a nearby mosque that alerted people to the overturning of
a tanker about a third of a mile from his home.
“My wife said, ‘Go and get fuel for your
motorbike,’ as others in the neighborhood were doing so,” said Mr. Saleemullah,
who goes by only one name. “People were collecting the fuel in anything they
could use. Some motorbike riders were even using their helmets.”
The fire erupted suddenly, Mr. Saleemullah
said. “I was standing at a distance and jumped backward when I saw the flame,”
he added. Many people jumped into a nearby waterway when the fire broke out, he
said.
Government officials disputed that
announcements had been made through mosque loudspeakers. “It is unverified,
mostly hearsay,” said Salman Sufi, an aide to the Punjab chief minister.
Residents and officials said that many of the
victims were travelers passing through the town who had stopped to take part in
what seemed like an opportunity to collect free fuel. The town is on a primary
route to Lahore, the capital of the province of Punjab, which was where the
truck had been headed.
Government officials blamed poverty and
illiteracy for the crowd’s behavior.
“Those were poor people who went to collect
fuel in utensils and buckets,” said the Punjab chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif,
at the briefing with the prime minister. “It is the result of illiteracy,” he
said, adding that several decades of endemic corruption were also a factor.
Officials said most of the bodies had been
burned beyond recognition. Several others were 40 percent to 80 percent burned,
making identification difficult.
The chief minister, who is in his third term,
said that hospital authorities had tagged the bodies and that forensic
examination, including DNA tests, would be carried out in the next few days.
“Meanwhile, the dead are being buried, as it is not possible to keep them in
cold storage for long due to the hot weather,” he said. Once forensic reports
are available, the chief minister said, relatives would be informed.
At Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur, many
people waited to learn the fate of their relatives.
The bodies of 125 victims were placed in the
cold storage of the hospital, officials said.
Shaista Bibi said she was searching for her
10-year-old son, who had been missing since the fire. “They are not telling me
where my son is,” she said. “At least tell me whether he is alive or not.”
She noted that her son was too young to use
fuel. “Where would he use it?” she asked. “It was just fun for the children.
They were just collecting something for free.”
By Monday afternoon, only five bodies had
been identified and returned to relatives, hospital officials said.
Muhammad Bilal, a resident of Basti Ramzan
Joia, a settlement near the crash site, said that many of those killed had been
from the town. “It is embarrassing for us that our village is mentioned in a
way that we were greedy for just a few liters of free fuel,” he said. “At the
moment, everyone is in a state of shock. We just want the dead bodies back.”
Asim Tanveer contributed reporting from
Bahawalpur, Pakistan, and Daniyal Hassan from Lahore, Pakistan.