Death toll from Indonesia pipeline blast reaches 12

SURABAYA, Indonesia, Nov 30 (Reuters) A man died late yesterday after suffering injuries from last week's gas pipeline explosion in the Indonesian area swamped by a devastating mudflow, pushing the incident's death toll to 12, a doctor said.

The November 22 blast, which disrupted gas operations in the region covered by state oil company Pertamina's East Java Gas Pipeline, occurred in an area where hot mud has been gushing unchecked since the end of May following a drilling accident.

''Around 98 per cent of his body suffered from burns. A skin transplant had been conducted but his condition deteriorated,'' Dr Urip Murtedjo, spokesman of the Soetomo hospital in the East Java capital of Surabaya, told reporters.

The pipeline was located underneath sand and gravel dikes made to contain the mud. The transmission pipe broke after land subsidence hiked the pressure, igniting some of the gas.

The 12 casualties related to the blast were soldiers or, like the latest victim, site workers.

The mudflow has inundated a major toll road, several villages, dozens of factories and swathes of paddy and sugarcane fields, causing an unfolding environmental disaster in Sidoarjo, an industrial suburb of Indonesia's second largest city Surabaya.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered on Thursday the total closure of the 440-ha area affected by the mudflow, saying it was considered a dangerous area.

Amin Widodo, head of the disaster study centre at the Surabaya Institute of Technology, told Reuters the government should put up clear forbidden signs around the mudzone and strictly guard the area.

Officials have said government forces would stand guard over the area twice the size of Monaco, but security in areas distant from the toll road that slices through the mudzone are lax.

REUTERS AJK DS1310