A Pakistan army soldier stands guards while rescue workers examine the site of an oil tanker explosion at a highway near Bahawalpur, Pakistan, Sunday, June 25, 2017. An overturned oil tanker burst into... (Associated Press) 
 
 BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan (AP) — An overturned oil tanker burst into flames in Pakistan on Sunday, killing 153 people who had rushed to the scene of the highway accident to gather leaking fuel, a hospital official said as the death toll continued to rise. 
 
 Dr. Javed Iqbal at Bahawalpur's Victoria Hospital in south Punjab said the latest deaths occurred at a hospital in Multan where some of the 50 critically injured, many of whom suffered extensive burns, had been taken. 
 
 The death toll could rise further as dozens are still in critical condition, said Dr. Mohammad Baqar, a senior rescue official in the area. There were dozens of other injuries of varying degree, he said. 
 
 Local news channels showed black smoke billowing skyward and scores of burned bodies, as well as rescue officials speeding the injured to hospital and army helicopters ferrying the wounded. 
 
 Saznoor Ahmad, 30, whose two cousins were killed in the fire, said the crowd of people screamed as the flames engulfed them. 
 
 "The fire moved so fast," he said. When the flames subsided the field was strewn with bodies, and nearby were the charred shells of motorcycles and cars that the villagers had used to race to the scene. 
 
 As the wounded cried out for help, residents wandered through the area looking for loved ones. 
 
 Zulkha Bibi was searching for her two sons. 
 
 "Someone should tell me about my beloved sons, where are they? Are they alive or are they no longer in this world? Please tell me," she pleaded. 
 
 The disaster came on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. While Saudi Arabia and most other Muslim countries celebrated the holiday Sunday, Pakistanis will mark it on Monday. 
 
 The tanker was driving from the southern port city of Karachi to Lahore, the Punjab provincial capital, when the driver lost control and crashed on the national highway outside Bahawalpur. 
 
 A loudspeaker atop a local mosque alerted villagers to the leaking fuel, and scores raced to the site with jerry cans, said Rana Mohammad Salim, deputy commissioner of Bahawalpur. 
 
 Highway police moved quickly to redirect traffic but couldn't stop the scores of villagers who raced to collect the fuel, spokesman Imran Shah told a local TV channel. 
 
 When the fire erupted, the same mosque loudspeaker called on the remaining villagers to help put it out. 
 
 Mohammed Salim ran toward the smoke carrying buckets of water and sand, but said the heat was too intense to reach those in need. 
 
 "I could hear people screaming but I couldn't get to them," he said. 
 
 Abdul Malik, a local police officer who was also among the first to arrive, described a "horrible scene." 
 
 "I have never seen anything like it in my life. Victims trapped in the fireball. They were screaming for help," he said. 
 
 When the fire subsided, "we saw bodies everywhere, so many were just skeletons. The people who were alive were in really bad shape," he said. 
 
 Eyewitnesses said about 30 motorcycles that had carried villagers to the accident site lay charred nearby. Eight other vehicles were destroyed, they said. 
 
 A state of emergency was declared at the Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur, said Dr.Iqbal. Within 15 minutes of the fire the hospital had called in extra doctors and nurses, and had formed a team to handle the emergency. 
 
 Iqbal said most of the patients suffered burns to upward of 80 percent of their bodies. After being stabilized 22 patients were transferred by C-130 aircraft to hospitals in the provincial capital, Lahore. Some of the most badly burned were evacuated by army helicopters to Multan, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away. 
 
 The dead included men, women and children. Many were burned beyond recognition, Baqar said, and will have to be identified using DNA testing. ||||| At Least 150 People Killed After Oil Truck Catches Fire In Pakistan 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption STR/AFP/Getty Images STR/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Updated at 8:20 a.m. ET 
 
 At least 150 people who had gathered to collect fuel from an overturned tanker truck in Pakistan were killed when it caught fire Sunday, according to The Associated Press. 
 
 More than 100 people were injured, many with severe burns. 
 
 "Authorities say most of the bodies are burnt beyond recognition and the death toll is likely to rise," reporter Abdul Sattar in Islamabad reports for NPR. "Children and women are among the injured." 
 
 The oil tanker was traveling to the city of Lahore in Pakistan's Punjab province when one of the tires burst, causing it to overturn outside of the city of Bahawalpur. Hundreds of people gathered around it, trying to collect the oil after it began leaking. 
 
 "People living in roadside villages, carrying domestic pots rushed to the scene to collect oil and they also made phone calls to their relatives living in other villages to immediate[ly] come to collect oil," police told Pakistan's state-run APP news. 
 
 They told the APP that police tried to prevent people from collecting oil, warning of the fire hazard, but the crowds ignored the warnings. 
 
 "According to the initial reports, somebody tried to light a cigarette, and when the spilt fuel caught fire, leading to the tanker's explosion," rescue worker spokesman Jam Sajjad Hussain told Reuters. 
 
 "Suddenly, huge fire erupted in the oil tanker which engulfed all people standing around the vehicle," police told the APP. They said the tanker was carrying about 6,600 gallons of oil. 
 
 "At least three cars and more than 70 motorcycles were also destroyed in the flames," Sattar reports. 
 
 Dozens of people are being treated in hospitals; several people were airlifted by helicopter. DNA testing may be required to identify some of the victims, according to the BBC. 
 
 It took firefighters more than two hours to put out the fire, Reuters reports. 
 
 Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been in London, is "immediately" returning to Pakistan to respond to the incident, the APP reports. He "has expressed deep grief over the heavy loss of life in the unfortunate accident of oil tanker fire at Ahmad Pur Sharqia, Bahawalpur," he said in a statement from his office to Reuters. ||||| Rescue workers run for cover as the Volcan de Fuego, or "Volcano of Fire," blows more clouds of ash in the El Rodeo hamlet of Escuintla, Guatemala, Tuesday, June 5, 2018. The fiery volcanic eruption on... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers run for cover as the Volcan de Fuego, or "Volcano of Fire," blows more clouds of ash in the El Rodeo hamlet of Escuintla, Guatemala, Tuesday, June 5, 2018. The fiery volcanic eruption on Sunday in south-central Guatemala killed scores as rescuers struggled to reach people where homes... (Associated Press) 
 
 ESCUINTLA, Guatemala (AP) — Lilian Hernandez wept as she spoke the names of aunts, uncles, cousins, her grandmother and two great-grandchildren — 36 family members in all — missing and presumed dead in the explosion of Guatemala's Volcano of Fire. 
 
 "My cousins Ingrid, Yomira, Paola, Jennifer, Michael, Andrea and Silvia, who was just 2-years-old," the distraught woman said — a litany that brought into sharp relief the scope of a disaster for which the final death toll is far from clear. 
 
 What was once a collection of verdant canyons, hillsides and farms resembled a moonscape of ash, rock and debris on Tuesday in the aftermath of the fast-moving avalanche of super-heated muck that roared into the tightly knit villages on the mountain's flanks, devastating entire families. 
 
 Two days after the eruption, the terrain was still too hot in many places for rescue crews to search for bodies or — increasingly unlikely with each passing day — survivors. 
 
 By afternoon a new column of smoke was rising from the mountain and Guatemala's disaster agency said volcanic material was descending its south side, prompting an evacuation order and the closure of a nearby national highway. Rescuers, police and journalists hurried to leave the area as a siren wailed and loudspeakers blared, "Evacuate!" 
 
 The new evacuation order set off a panic even in areas that were not under it. Dozens of people could be seen walking down roadsides carrying children or a few belongings beside paralyzed traffic in parts of Escuintla township south of the volcano. 
 
 A lucky few, like retiree Pantaleon Garcia, was able to load his grandchildren into the back of a pickup with a jug of water and some food, to go to stay with relatives in another town. 
 
 "You have to be prepared, for the children," he said. 
 
 Even in more distant central Escuintla, which hosts most of the shelters for those evacuated from other areas, businesses were closed as people left. 
 
 On Sunday, when the volcano exploded in a massive cloud of ash and molten rock, Hernandez said her brother and sister ran to check on their 70-year-old grandmother on the family's plot of land in the village of San Miguel Los Lotes. 
 
 "She said that it was God's will, she was not going to flee," Hernandez said. "She was unable to walk. It was hard for her to get around." 
 
 Her brother and sister made it to safety, but their grandmother has not been seen again. 
 
 Hernandez and her husband, Francisco Ortiz, survived because they moved out of Los Lotes just two months ago to begin a new life on a small plot of land. 
 
 The couple has been staying at a Mormon church in the nearby city of Escuintla and going to a morgue there to await news. So far only the body of one relative, her 28-year-old cousin, Cesar Gudiel Escalante, has been recovered and identified. 
 
 "The people ended up buried in nearly 3 meters of lava," Ortiz said. "Nobody is left there." 
 
 Other families experienced similar tragedies. 
 
 As President Jimmy Morales toured the area and met with survivors on Monday, a woman begged him to help her loved ones in Los Lotes. 
 
 "Mr. President, my family is missing. Send a helicopter to throw water over them because they are burning," she said. "I have three children, a grandchild, and all my brothers, my mother, all my family are there. ... More than 20 have disappeared." 
 
 The fast-moving flows with temperatures as high as 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 Celsius) and hot ash and volcanic gases that can cause rapid asphyxiation caught many off guard. 
 
 On Tuesday, it was clear that the official death toll was sure to climb and fears spread that anyone still stuck in the buried houses was dead and would remain entombed there. 
 
 Guatemala's National Institute of Forensic Sciences raised the death toll Tuesday evening to 75. The institute said that 23 of those recovered bodies had been identified. 
 
 Sergio Cabanas, director of the disaster agency, said Tuesday night at a news conference that 192 people were listed as missing. He said it was not immediately clear if some of those could be among the unidentified bodies. 
 
 Officials are crossing-checking census data with aerial photos of homes, registers of people in shelters and lists of the missing and injured, Cabanas said. The only thing they did not yet have was information on the unidentified bodies, but would be adding that as it became available, he said. 
 
 At a roadblock, Joel Gonzalez complained that police wouldn't let him through to see his family's house in the village of San Juan Alotenango, where his 76-year-old father lay buried in ash along with four other relatives. 
 
 "They say they are going to leave them buried there, and we are not going to know if it's really them," the 39-year-old farmer said. "They are taking away our opportunity to say goodbye." 
 
 A spokesman for Guatemala's firefighters said that once it reaches 72 hours after the eruption, there will be little chance of finding anyone alive. 
 
 "We don't rule out the possibility of some person alive, but the condition in which the homes are makes that possibility pretty unlikely," said the spokesman, Julio Sanchez, adding that some of the ash was still at temperatures between 750 and 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (400 and 700 degrees Celsius). 
 
 In the devastated town of El Rodeo, gray soot coated trees and homes and an ash-covered deer lay dead in the debris. Rescuers wearing hard hats, masks and goggles used shovels to dig through homes, unearthing at least one body burned beyond recognition. 
 
 Amid the destruction, there was one glimmer of hope: The rescue of a black-and-white dog found alive in a home where four people lay dead. 
 
 "He is called Rambo," said volunteer firefighter Sergio Vazquez, who carried the dog on his shoulders to safety. "It may be that this dog no longer has a family." 
 
 Vazquez had no explanation for how the dog survived while the people died. 
 
 Sanchez, the Conred spokesman, said many dogs and cats had been rescued with burns on their paws from the mud and ash, some blinded from the volcanic gases. 
 
 "Animals have a different sort of resistance ... and different behavior when it comes to finding refuge," Sanchez said. 
 
 Only 17 of the bodies recovered so far have been identified due to the extreme heat that charred their features and burned off fingerprints, and authorities hope other means such as DNA testing can help. 
 
 Authorities say at least 46 people were injured in the eruption, and 12 shelters were housing 1,877 people. 
 
 The Guatemalan military said a U.S. Air Force plane was flying in Tuesday to take about a half-dozen children who suffered burns for treatment in Galveston, Texas. 
 
 Lacking electricity in the hardest hit areas, emergency crews were carrying out rescue efforts during daylight hours and calling them off for safety reasons when darkness fell. 
 
 As dawn broke Tuesday, the volcano continued to rattle with what Guatemala's Volcanology Institute said were eight to 10 moderate eruptions per hour — vastly less intense than Sunday's big blasts. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Sonia Perez D. reported this story in Escuintla and AP writer Mark Stevenson reported from El Rodeo.
– It was a simple highway accident: A tanker blows a tire, and overturns. But it overturned Sunday in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, carrying 6,600 gallons of oil, and surrounding villagers " carrying domestic pots rushed to the scene to collect oil and they also made phone calls to their relatives living in other villages to ... come to collect oil" police told state-run media, per NPR. According to a rescuer, "somebody tried to light a cigarette," which caught fire, exploded the tanker, and "engulfed all people standing around the vehicle," reports the AP. At least 153 are dead, a toll expected to rise as dozens more remain critically injured. "The fire moved so fast," said one survivor who lost two cousins. Others describe an unbearable scene: "I could hear people screaming but I couldn't get to them," says one would-be rescuer, while a cop says that "I have never seen anything like it in my life. Victims trapped in the fireball. They were screaming for help." A local doctor says most victims suffered burns on 80% of their bodies, while another says that many of the dead were burned beyond recognition and will have to be identified via DNA testing.