Conventional direct injection internal combustion engines will not completely ignite and burn relatively lower-cetane-number fuels such as 100 percent methanol or ethanol because the fuel spray injection pattern usually cannot carry or propagate a flame to all the injected fuel which is typically made up of individual fuel streams which are separated by pockets of fuel-deficient intake air. The present fuel combustion system (10) includes a fuel ignition-initiating device (26) such as a glow plug (70) and apparatus (98, 102) for interconnectedly contacting and continuously bridging all of the individual fuel streams (66) with an auxiliary cloud (94) of well-atomized fuel. In this manner, a flame initiated by the fuel ignition-initiating device (26) is rapidly and completely propagated via the auxiliary cloud (94) of fuel to all the individual fuel streams (66).