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)