Lagos — The death toll in a fire which engulfed scores of people as they scooped petrol from a burst pipeline in southeast Nigeria has reached 125, the Red Cross said on Monday.

A mass burial was being planned for unidentified victims, local officials added.

The pipeline transporting fuel from refineries in the coastal city of Port Harcourt to parts of central and northern Nigeria, was ruptured by thieves at Onicha-Amaiyi village, 40 km south of Umuahia, the Abia State capital, more than two weeks ago. It caught fire on Thursday night while scores of people were scooping the petrol, villagers said.

"More bodies have been found in the bushes surrounding the scene of the fire bringing known deaths to 125," Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Nigerian Red Cross, told IRIN.

Chukwuemeka Aruji, the health superintendent for the Isuikuato local government council in charge of the area, told reporters a mass burial was being organised for unidentified victims, including at least 20 bodies which were burnt beyond recognition and had not been claimed.

Residents of the village blamed the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, which operates the pipeline for negligence, saying it was informed of the fuel leakage long before the fire. But officials of the corporation firmly denied having any knowledge of the leakage before the fire.

However, deputy governor of Abia State, Chima Nwafor, told reporters he believed residents had reported the pipeline leakage to NNPC. "We will investigate why the NNPC did not respond immediately to the distress calls," he said.

Nigeria is Africa's leading oil producer, but the country is frequently plagued by fuel shortages. Local refineries struggle to meet the demand of Nigeria's 120 million population while large volumes of oil products are smuggled to neighbouring countries where retail prices are higher.

The resulting shortages have encouraged thieves to tap into pipelines to steal fuel which is then sold on the black market. In the past four years more than 2,000 people have been killed by pipeline fires during such activities.

The worst incident ocurred in 1998 when over 1,200 people died in a massive conflagration in the town of Jesse in the oil-rich Niger Delta.