Intentional gas-line blast kills 260

A gang of thieves has been tapping the pipeline for months.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- A child's flip flop blistered by heat. A half-melted plastic bucket.
Such ordinary objects were among the few identifiable items lying in a horrific scene of fused bones, skulls and charred limbs.
A gasoline pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into a blazing inferno Tuesday as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighborhood, killing at least 260 people in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa's biggest petroleum producer.
Braving a towering pillar of fire and a cloud of acrid black smoke, thousands of people in Lagos' Abule Egba neighborhood surged around rescue workers carrying away charred bodies, hoping to catch a glimpse of missing relatives.
"My brother, my brother," wept 19-year-old Suboke Adebayo as an unidentified male corpse was loaded into an ambulance. Adebayo, a student, had spent hours trying unsuccessfully to contact her sibling: "I've been calling him since this morning, but I can only hear a holding tone."
A woman in a yellow T-shirt sobbed uncontrollably, slapping herself on the face and clawing her own arms in grief over the devastation of bodies and gutted cars spread around the pipeline.
Toll to rise
A senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, Ige Oladimeji, said his workers counted 260 dead by nightfall and took 60 injured people to hospitals. "We are still counting [dead], but there will not be hundreds more," he said.
Residents said a gang of thieves had been illegally tapping the pipeline for months, carting away gasoline in tankers for resale.
Tapping is common in Nigeria, where many of the 130 million people live in woeful poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful wealthy in this major oil exporter. A single pilfered can of gasoline sold on the black market can earn two weeks of wages for a poor Nigerian.
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