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Guerrillas take credit for blasts in Mexico

Thousands are evacuated after explosions hit oil and gas pipelines.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 11, 2007

VERACRUZ, Mexico - A shadowy leftist guerrilla group took credit for a string of explosions that ripped apart at least six Mexican oil and gas pipelines Monday.

The six explosions could be seen miles away, and set off fires that sent flames and black smoke shooting high above the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz.

At least a dozen pipelines, most carrying natural gas, were affected, said Jesus Reyes Heroles, the head of Mexico's oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos.

There were no immediate reports of injuries directly caused by the explosions and fires.

At least 21,000 people were evacuated as a precaution. Some of them were later allowed to return home.

It was the second time in three months that the so-called People's Revolutionary Army claimed responsibility for a pipeline attack. The group is a secretive, tiny rebel group that staged several armed attacks on government and police installations in southern Mexico in the 1990s.

The group claimed responsibility for a July attack on a major gas pipeline from Mexico City to Guadalajara in western Mexico.

The government did not immediately confirm the group's claim of responsibility. Interior Secretary Francisco Ramirez said the federal Attorney General's Office was trying to determine who was responsible.

Truck explosion: A dynamite-laden truck exploded after colliding with another vehicle on a busy highway in Piedras Negras in northern Mexico's coal country, killing at least 34 people, state and federal officials said.

Authorities said the two vehicles crashed into each other Sunday evening, drawing a crowd of 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 dynamite exploded, sending a ball of fire into the sky that consumed nearby cars and left a 10- by 40-foot crater, said Maximo Alberto Neri Lopez, a federal police official. More than 150 people were injured, he said.

[Last modified September 11, 2007, 01:31:45]