MOURNING A BLAST VICTIM
1,000 WORDS: AHMEDPUR EAST, Pakistan
At a funeral Monday, Pakistani mourners prayed for one of the 157 people killed a day earlier when an oil tanker truck exploded. The truck, carrying 6,600 gallons of gasoline, was traveling from the southern port city of Karachi to Lahore when the driver lost control and crashed on a highway outside the town of Bahawalpur. Alerted by an announcement over a loudspeaker at a local mosque, scores of villagers rushed to the scene to collect the spilled fuel. But the truck exploded, and the villagers were engulfed in f lames. Authorities said many of the bodies will have to be identified through DNA testing.