Eight people were killed and two were missing after an underground gas pipeline exploded near a gas well spewing mud in Indonesia, police and hospital staff said on Thursday.
The powerful blast shot flames 500 metres (1,600 feet) into the night sky and burst a dyke containing hot mud which has inundated East Java's Sidoarjo district, sweeping away four cars and forcing the closure of a nearby highway.
The district hospital said seven bodies had arrived there by 9:00 am (0200 GMT) Thursday and 12 other people were being treated for injuries after the explosion.
"Eight people were found dead and two others are still missing," said an officer on duty at the Porong subdistrict police station, who gave his name as Tyo.
Two policeman and two soldiers, including a local subdistrict military commander, were among the dead while two men were still missing, Tyo said.
The pipeline, about two meters (yards) underground, burst after subsidence around the gas well, which has submerged large swathes of land and forced more than 12,000 people to flee their homes since it started gushing mud in May.
The 28-inch (70-centimetre) pipe exploded at about 10:20 p.m. Wednesday, Tyo said.
It is operated by the state oil and gas company Pertamina and channels gas from north-east of East Java to a chemical industry plant and to the local state gas and electricity companies.
"It is the result of subsidence, as the ground sunk around the mud volcano," said Edi Sunardi, a geologist with the Indonesian Association of Geologist Experts.
"This of course, exerts pressure on the pipe and at one point, when the pressure is too much to bear, the pipe will break, the high-pression gas would leak and explode at contact with air."
He said geologists had earlier warned about the dangers of land sinking as mud shoots to the surface.
"We have already warned about the potential of such incidents, since quite early after the 'mud volcano' developed. But it seems the warning has fallen on deaf ears," Sunardi said.
The land around the gas well has sunk by up to five meters so far, officials have said.
Flames shot into the night sky after the explosion, amateur footage screened on the private Metro TV station showed.
But the flames subsided quickly as the gas supply automatically shut itself down, said Rudi Novrianto, the spokesman of the national team working to repair the mud flow.
"We are now trying to repair the dyke segment that collapsed," Novrianto told AFP. He declined to further elaborate, including on the extent of the damage.