Death toll expected to rise from 150 in N Korea train crash

The fearsome picture of devastation from North Korean train explosions near the Chinese border took shape yesterday with initial reports saying 150 were killed, 1,249 injured and 8,200 houses or apartments damaged -- many of them destroyed.

North Korea's government said the explosion occurred when train cars carrying dynamite touched power lines, according to Chris Wardle, an official with the Irish aid agency Concern.

"The numbers we've been told are 150 dead," some of them schoolchildren, he said by telephone from Pyongyang.

Red Cross spokesman John Sparrow in Beijing said the blast had killed at least 54 people and injured 1,249, but that he expected the toll to rise, citing massive damage. The explosion destroyed 1,850 apartments or houses and damaged 6,350, he said.

Initial reports by South Korean media said 3,000 people were killed or hurt in the disaster at a railway station in Ryongchon, a bustling town about 150km north of Pyongyang.

The secretive North's communist government was silent yesterday about the disaster, but invited foreign officials to visit the site today.

"Until that happens, we won't know what really happened there," Wardle said.

Reports varied over what exactly exploded.

"We have been told that the accident was caused by live electrical wire getting in contact with dynamite," apparently while officials were trying to disconnect the carriages and link them up to another train, Wardle said.

Sparrow said the trains were carrying explosives similar to those used in mining. China's Xinhua News Agency reported the blast was blamed on ammonium nitrate -- a chemical used in explosives, rocket fuel and fertilizer -- leaking from one train. South Korea's unification minister said the trains were carrying fuel.

The blast leveled the train station, a school and apartments within a 500m radius, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, quoting Chinese witnesses. It said there were about 500 passengers and railway officials in the station at the time of the explosion.

Ryongchon is the site of chemical and metalworking plants, and has a population of 130,000.

Sparrow said Red Cross workers in the North were distributing tents and blankets to 4,000 families, while the international group was putting together hospital kits containing antibiotics, bandages and anesthetics.

Chinese hospitals near the border were put on "high alert," he said.

There was no sign in Dandong, the Chinese border city nearest to the crash site, of injured people being brought out of North Korea. But the city's three biggest hospitals were preparing for a possible surge of patients.

"We're ready to offer our close neighbor our best medical help anytime," said an official at Dandong Chinese Hospital.

In Seoul, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said China was urging North Korea to send the injured across the border to hospitals in China. But he said Pyongyang was instead asking China to dispatch relief workers to the scene.

China confirmed the first fatalities yesterday afternoon, saying two Chinese were killed and 12 others injured in the disaster. The Xinhua report had cited the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang.