Onicha Amiyi-Uhu, Nigeria ? Villagers accused the state oil company Sunday of failing to repair a vandalized pipeline that gushed fuel for weeks before exploding, killing at least 125 people.

Rescue crews and villagers picked through the blackened forest surrounding the site of Thursday’s disaster searching for missing loved ones. The victims were mainly unemployed youths scavenging the fuel to resell.

The charred remains of 20 people could be seen in tangled thickets of burned bush.

Charles Onoha, chief of Onicha Amiyi-Uhu village, said he and other elders alerted the Nigerian National Petroleum Co. in mid-May that the pipeline in southeastern Nigeria had been ruptured.

“We begged NNPC to stop the spillage, but they did nothing,” Onoha said. “They should be held responsible for this disaster.”

In the capital of Abuja, state company spokesman Ndu Ughamadu insisted he and other officials first became aware of the leakage after the explosion.

Ughamadu added that company policy was to continue pumping fuel during “minor leakages.”

“We have more than 3,200 miles of pipeline to monitor. At the same time we have a serious fuel scarcity in this country. We cannot afford to halt supplies unless the breakage is a serious one,” Ughamadu said.

The 10-year-old multipurpose pipeline is used to pump kerosene, diesel and gasoline from a refinery in the southeastern Port Harcourt 140 miles north to the city of Enugu.

Residents said vandals frequently ruptured the pipe, permitting young men to collect the fuel in jerry cans and barrels for resale, a practice known in Nigeria as “scooping” or “bunkering.”

Innocent Chiege, a village medical doctor, accused the state company of negligence.

“We had called on them for surveillance of the pipeline to stop leakages and prevent disasters. But they did not listen,” he said.

Pipeline vandalism is common in Nigeria despite the risk of fire, prosecution or being shot on sight by security forces.

Word of Thursday’s explosion emerged slowly because many survivors apparently feared prosecution for theft and sabotage, Nigerian Red Cross president Emmanuel Ijewere said.

The death toll from the explosion was 125, according to Nigerian Red Cross figures released late Sunday. But Ijewere said the toll likely would rise as rescuers collected more bodies and interviewed survivors.

Thousands of people have been killed in explosions in recent years, including more than 1,000 in a 1998 blast.