Food, tents and other emergency aid from China arrived yesterday in North Korea to help it recover from a devastating train explosion that killed more than 160 people -- nearly half of them children in a school torn apart by the blast -- and left thousands homeless.
Aid workers who were the first outsiders to reach the disaster site this weekend recounted seeing huge craters, twisted rail tracks and scorched buildings following Thursday's massive explosion in Ryongchon, near the Chinese border.
But all of the 1,300 people that North Korean officials said were injured in the catastrophe, along with the bodies of the dead, had been evacuated before the aid workers arrived to the nearby city of Sinuiju where the foreigners were not immediately able to visit.
By yesterday, the Red Cross said North Korea's official death toll had risen to 161 -- up from the 154 reported earlier. John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman in Beijing, confirmed the new toll but did not say whether it reflected new deaths or simply freshly confirmed casualties.
He said earlier that 76 of the dead were children in a school that had been destroyed.
Pyongyang blamed the disaster on human error, saying a train cargo of oil and chemicals ignited when workers knocked the wagons against power lines.
The statement was an unusually frank one for North Korea.
Thousands of Ryongchon residents were left homeless in the disaster.
"They've been taken in by other families. We were fearing people on the streets," Sparrow said yesterday. "We breathed a big sigh of relief when we saw that wasn't the case."
North Korean state television announced yesterday that Chinese supplies were headed for Ryong-chon, indicating the government had notified its population of the catastrophe.
Eleven trucks from China crossed the bridge into North Korea at 1pm yesterday, carrying instant noodles, blankets, canned food and tents -- "materials worth 1 million yuan" (US$120,000).
The trucks were driven by Chinese People's Armed Police officers and bore red-and-white banners saying "donations from the government of the People's Republic of China."
South Korea's Red Cross planned to send instant noodles, bottles of mineral water, blankets and clothing once the means of transportation is organized.
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