A commuter train crashed into another passenger train during rush hour on Friday in South Africa’s largest city, injuring more than 300 people, an emergency services spokeswoman said.
Johannesburg Emergency Services spokeswoman Nana Radebe said 326 people were rushed to nearby hospitals with minor to serious injuries. No fatalities were reported.
“For now we have removed people with minor to serious injuries, but none critical,” she said, adding that firefighters searched for commuters who might have been trapped inside the train cars.
The trains were on the same track, Radebe told reporters, and it appeared that a traveling train collided with a stationary train.
“What we do know is that one vehicle rear-ended the other,” said Russel Meiring, a spokesman for ER24, a private emergency service.
Meiring said his crew counted more than 200 injured at the scene. Injured passengers were treated “absolutely everywhere” where paramedics could find space around the wreckage before being taken to hospitals, Meiring said.
“The one train had stopped because of a signal when another came from behind us hooting and smashed into its back,” one commuter told the African News Agency.
The accident happened at rush hour between two stations, with both trains traveling from the Johannesburg city center to the township of Soweto, said Lillian Mofokeng, the Metrorail spokeswoman for Gauteng Province.
The cause of the accident was unknown and authorities were still gathering information about the collision, Mofokeng said.
“Our priority right now is just to attend to the injured and then arrange alternative transport,” she said.
About 100 passengers who were not injured would be bussed home, Mofokeng said.
In April, two passenger trains collided south of Johannesburg, killing the conductor of one of the trains and injuring 241 people.
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft