Massive oil explosion in Mexican City kills 27

A huge oil pipe explosion has killed 27 people including 12 children in Mexico.

Gushing crude oil tued streets into rivers of flames - incinerating cars, houses and trees and buing victims to death.

A further 52 people were injured in the blast - which has been blamed on oil thieves - in San Martin Texmelucan, about 55 miles east of Mexico City.

The blast has affected a three-mile radius, leaving metal and pavement twisted from the intense heat.

More than 200 people were today staying in shelters after fleeing San Martin, where more than 115 homes were scorched, 30 of them completely destroyed, in the blast yesterday moing.

The explosion was apparently caused by thieves trying to steal crude oil, said Valentin Meneses, interior secretary for the state of Puebla, where San Martin is located.

Investigators found a hole in the pipeline and equipment for extracting crude, said Laura Gurza, chief of the federal Civil Protection emergency response agency.

'They lost control because of the high pressure with which the fuel exits the pipeline,' she said, adding that the oil began to flow down the city's streets and into a nearby river.

Evacuation: An injured man is carried to safety after the blast, which has been blamed on oil thieves

Grim task: Rescue workers bring out the body of one of the victims. 12 of the dead are children

Incinerated: Firefighters search for survivors after the blast. A witness said it was 'as if a bomb had exploded'

Several bodies were found in cars near the location of the leak, but authorities didn't know if the dead were involved in the theft or just there by coincidence.

The rupture occurred in an elevated part of the city, sending the crude running down a river bed more than half a mile, Miss Gurza said.

At some point a spark caused the crude to erupt into flames, though officials didn't know the origin of the spark.

Many of the buildings destroyed were humble cement homes. Miss Gurza said people are not permitted to live near oil pipelines, but Jose Luis Chavez, 58, who lives 10 blocks from the explosion, said residents had been there for some time.

Mr Chavez said he heard at least two loud booms and saw flames leap more than 30 feet in the air. It was as if a bomb had exploded underground, he added.

Devastation: This car was tued to ash in the heat

Heart-breaking: Relatives of victims cry at the site of the explosion

Mammoth task: Firefighters are dwarfed by the wall of flames behind them

President Felipe Calderon arrived to talk with displaced people in a shelter and to survey damage on the main street where the fuel exploded. Earlier, he expressed condolences to the families of the dead and his support for those injured and affected. He said the federal govement would give its full support in investigating who was responsible and bringing them to justice.

No one has yet been detained.

Interior minister Francisco Blake Mora mobilised several federal ministries to help victims with medical care, shelter and recovering their lost homes and property.

The state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said in a statement that it had shut down the pipeline. Govement authorities said the fire was under control by midday, and fires were buing the remaining crude. The area was without electricity or water.

San Martin Texmelucan is a city of about 130,000 people, where farming is important to the area's economy, along with a manufacturing sector that makes chemical and petrochemical products, pharmaceuticals, textiles and metals.

Pemex has struggled with chronic theft, losing as much as 10 per cent of all of its product.

Criminals tap remote pipelines, sometimes building pipelines of their own, to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars of oil each year, Pemex has said.

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