On Tuesday officials from Aramco, the Saudi Arabia's state oil company raised the death toll from the Sunday blast that occurred at a national gas pipeline, saying that 40 people had been killed.

The explosion happened at about 19 miles from Aramco's Hawiyah gas plant, where Haradh-Uthmaniyah pipeline caught fire after midnight Saturday while the workers were connecting a new pipe to the line.

Initially the Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and the company said that 28 people were killed and other 12 were missing, Herald Tribune reports.

Earlier, Aramco mentioned that among those killed there were also five of their employees.

Company officials said on Tuesday that six Saudi nationals were among the dead and the rest were from different Asian nationalities.

On Monday seven bodies were recovered by the investigation teams from the site of the explosion.

Apparently, due to the force of the blast, some of the bodies were thrown at about 130 meters from the site.

Some corpses were so charred that it was very difficult for the forensics to identify the victims.

Gas supplies were not interrupted and there was no link between the blast and the OPEC summit that took place in the weekend in Riyadh. A terrorist attack was ruled out by the Saudis.

Aramco is the biggest oil producer in the world and is based on the east cost of Saudi Arabia.