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PRC train crash leaves 70 dead

A high-speed passenger train jumped its tracks and slammed into another train in eastern China yesterday, killing at least 70 people and injuring more than 400 in China’s worst train accident in a decade.

Authorities were quoted as saying that human error was to blame.

The death toll could rise, with 70 people hospitalized in critical condition after the pre-dawn crash in a rural part of Shandong Province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It said a total of 420 people had been hurt. Injured survivors included four French nationals, a Chinese national sailing coach and a three-year-old boy.

Xinhua said investigators had ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash. Its English report said it was human error, while its Chinese-language report attributed the crash to negligence without giving other details.

Xinhua said, however, that two high-ranking railway officials in Shandong had been fired.

The crash just before the May Day long weekend holiday happened when a train traveling from Beijing to Qingdao derailed and hit a second passenger train just before dawn. Nine of the first train’s carriages were knocked into a dirt ditch, Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said in a statement.

The second train on its way from Yantai in Shandong to Xuzhou in eastern Jiangsu Province was knocked off its tracks although it stayed upright. News photos showed several of its carriages sitting across the train tracks just outside the city of Zibo.

News photos showed rescuers pulling passengers from a carriage sitting on its side. Survivors stood or sat near the wreckage.

Xinhua said bloodstained sheets could be seen on the ground beside the twisted train cars.

It did not say how many people were on both trains.

“Most passengers were still asleep, but some were standing in the aisle waiting to get off at the Zibo railway station,” one passenger surnamed Zhang told Xinhua.

“I suddenly felt the train, like a rollercoaster, topple ... to one side and all the way to the other side. When it finally went off the tracks, many people fell on me,” Zhang said.
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