LAGOS, Nigeria, Dec. 26 (AP) — A gasoline pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into a blazing inferno on Tuesday in a poor neighborhood, killing at least 260 people in the latest oil industry disaster to strike Nigeria, Africa’s biggest petroleum producer.

Braving a towering pillar of fire and a cloud of acrid black smoke in the Abule Egba neighborhood here, thousands of people searching for missing relatives crowded around rescue workers carrying away charred bodies.

“My brother, my brother,” cried Suboke Adebayo, 19, as an unidentified male body was loaded into an ambulance. Ms. Adebayo, a student, had spent hours trying to telephone her brother. “I’ve been calling him since this morning, but I can only hear a holding tone.”

A woman in a yellow T-shirt sobbed uncontrollably, slapping her own face and clawing her own arms in grief over the bodies and gutted cars spread around the pipeline.