At least 20 have died from a gas tanker truck explosion on a Mexico City highway around 5 a.m. Tuesday, with three dozen others critically injured.

According to Fox, the Citizen Safety Department of Mexico State said the death toll could easily heighten, as emergency crews continue pulling bodies and burnt remains of homes and vehicles from the wreckage in the suburb of Ecatepec.

Television news coverage depicted photos and video of heavy, dark smoke and flames engulfing homes in the late-night sky.

There has been no immediate explanation of the explosion's cause, residents say.

Rogelio Martinez, who lives in the neighborhood, said he is still unsure what happened to cause the tanker's explosion.

"We don't really know what happened," he said. "We just pulled burned people, and put out the fire in the houses."

As crews cleaned up where they could, they discovered many dead victims who had been burned to death in their homes. One journalist saw emergency workers take three corpses covered by white sheets from one house.

Mayor of Ecatepec Pablo Bedolla said that 20 homes and one school suffered at the hands of the explosion. There were no injuries at the school, as the blast happened before in-class hours.

"People are very shaken, above all, because of the injuries and the large number of dead," he said. "I've spoken with the families of the victims, and they are just sobbing."

At the scene, a large piece of shrapnel that flew from the truck's gas tank landed about 50 yards away by sheer force of the explosion. It hit the wall of a house and some cars parked outside-burnt, wrecked skeletons of vehicles could be seen across the entire site of the blast.

Most of the homes that were hit were made with cinderblocks, or sheet tin-both materials that, when hit by the explosion, could not withstand the blast. The heavy cinderblocks and sharp tin were responsible for a handful of the deaths and many of the injuries.

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