Left-wing saboteurs took credit for launching a series of explosions Monday that ripped apart pipelines owned by Mexico's state-run oil company.

Soldiers watch as a fire rages near the town of Omealca, in the Gulf state of Veracruz, Mexico, on Monday. Six explosions believed to be the result of sabotage ripped natural gas pipelines early Monday, sparking the fires.
(Fotojarocha.com via Maya Comunicaciones-Luis Monroy/Associated Press)

Six blasts affected at least a dozen major gas pipelines for the Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, prompting the evacuation of 21,000 people from the area in southern Mexico, government officials said.

No deaths or injuries were reported from the explosions, which occurred about 2 a.m. in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

However, civil defence agencies said that two elderly women who lived nearby died of heart attacks. Both women were in their 70s, and reverberations from the blasts could reportedly be felt 19 kilometres away.

One witness, Pedro Jimenez, told the Associated Press that he could see the fires lighting up fields of crops from as far as 20 kilometres away.

An image from Mexican television shows fireballs billowing from a Pemex gas pipeline.
(CBC)

Pemex said fires erupted afterward at four sections of the pipelines, but they were all contained.

It was the second time in three months that the so-called People's Revolutionary Army claimed responsibility for a pipeline attack as part of what it has labelled its "prolonged people's war" against "the anti-people government." The group, known as the EPR, is a secretive, left-wing guerrilla group that also claimed responsibility for an attack on a Pemex pipeline in July.

However, the government did not immediately confirm the EPR's claim of responsibility. The country's Attorney General's office was trying to determine who was behind the attacks.

At the time of the last attack, at least a dozen major companies were forced to suspend or scale back operations, and the group vowed to continue its attacks against government installations.

A police official who requested anonymity told the Associated Press that a note by the group linked to the July attack was found alongside at least one undetonated explosive device that was uncovered by soldiers in a swampy area about half a kilometre from a highway toll booth that's 40 kilometres north of the port of Veracruz.

Later Monday, Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned the attacks in a statement from India, where he was on a state visit.

"There is no room for such criminal acts in a democratic Mexico," he said.

Explosives-laden truck crashes

In a separate incident on Monday in northern Mexico, a truck loaded with mining explosives reportedly crashed head-on into another vehicle, killing at least 28 people.

Officials said the dead included three newspaper reporters as well as bystanders who had rushed to the scene to help near the town of Sacramento, roughly 600 kilometres north of Mexico City. About 150 people were also hurt in the blast, said federal police official Maximo Alberto Neri Lopex.

The huge blast reportedly left a three-by-12-metre crater in the street.

TV images from the scene showed the burnt-out chassis of several vehicles littered about a roadway.

Police said it did not appear foul play was involved in the fatal collision and resulting explosion.

With files from the Associated Press