IN the first inter-Korean cargo flight, South Korea's Red Cross will transport blankets, medicine and other aid to North Korea today to help the communist nation cope with the aftermath of the devastating train explosion of April 22.

South Korea will start shipping €22.5m in relief goods next week to a North Korean town devastated by a deadly train explosion, officials said.

APPALLED by the carnage of last week’s train explosion in North Korea, South Korea quickly offered to send doctors to treat child victims in crowded hospitals, their charred faces wrapped in dirty bandages and without the intravenous drips essential to burn patients.

North Korea made new pleas for help and thousands of rescuers rushed in food, medicine and tents as the victims of last week’s train explosion struggled to stay clean and warm nearly a week after the disaster.

THE World Food Programme warned yesterday that the relief effort for those hit by the devastating North Korea train blast was depleting limited food stocks intended to feed 6.5 million other desperate people.

North Korea estimated today that last week’s massive train explosion caused about €300.8m in damage, an announcement that could be part of an effort to garner as much aid as possible for the impoverished nation.

North Korea is balking at opening its heavily armed border to relief trucks from South Korea, even as international aid groups seek more help for thousands injured and made homeless by a massive train explosion in the impoverished country.

NORTH Korea is in desperate need of medical aid to treat victims of its huge train blast, UN officials warned yesterday.

Food, tents and other emergency aid from China arrived today in North Korea to help it recover from a devastating train explosion that killed more than 160 people, about half of them children in a school torn apart by the blast.

The British Ambassador to North Korea today described how two schools bore the brunt of a massive train explosion which killed 154 people close to the Chinese border.

South Korea and China today led international promises for aid for North Korea to help cope with its disastrous train explosion.

A Red Cross worker at the scene of a devastating train explosion in North Korea said the immediate area around the site was "obliterated," a group spokesman said.

At least 154 people were confirmed dead in the explosion of a North Korean train, China’s official state news agency said today in the first bulletin datelined from the scene of the disaster.

SECRETIVE North Korea finally admitted last night that several hundred people were killed and thousands injured when trains carrying explosives and blew up in a station.

North Korea has asked for international help following the rail disaster, the UN said today.

Two trains that collided triggering a massive blast in North Korea were carrying explosives and not fuel, while casualty figures appeared to be lower than originally feared, an international Red Cross official said today.

A catastrophic train accident in North Korea was caused by a collision of fuel-laden trains and there may be “a large number of people killed or injured”, South Korea’s Unification Minister said today.

North Korea was maintaining its cloak of silence today over the crash between two North Korean fuel trains that is believed to have killed or injured as many as 3,000 people.

SOME 3,000 people were dead or injured after two trains carrying fuel collided and exploded at a North Korean railway station near the Chinese border yesterday.

NORTH Korea declared a state of emergency and closed down phonelines last night as the paranoid Stalinist state attempted to impose a news blackout after as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured in a horror train crash.

North Korea declared a state of emergency tonight after as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured when two fuel trains collided and exploded at a station near the Chinese border.

A state of emergency was declared in North Korea after two trains carrying highly inflammable freight collided and exploded, killing or injuring up to 3,000 people.

Thousands of people were reported injured, many killed, when two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum gas collided and exploded in a North Korean train station, hours after leader Kim Jong Il passed through on his return from a China visit.