‘Help me. The door is locked’

DISTRAUGHT relatives yesterday spoke of their last conversations with victims of the South Korean arson attacks.

Some passengers trapped on a burning train were able to make anguished last phone calls.

Their families described how they heard from their loved ones as flames engulfed the carriages in the underground tunnel in the city of Daegu.

Chung Sook-jae's 26-year-old daughter Min Shim-eun telephoned her husband to say she was suffocating. Then the line went dead.

"She never caused any problems," a devastated Mrs Chung said. "She was a good kid. Why does this have to happen her?"

She could only fear the worst: "If she's not out by now, she's probably dead. What am I going to do if her body is all burnt out of recognition?"

Her story was one that was all to familiar across Daegu yesterday.

Kang Yeon-ju, 21, phoned home to say there was a fire on the train. She was trapped the doors would not open.

"I told her to just break open a window and get out," her mother, Kim Bok-sun, said.

She called her daughter minutes later, "but she never answered the phone".

One man's wife was trapped by the inferno. He answered a desperate call from her mobile phone. "Help me," she begged him. "There's a fire on the subway. The door is locked."

And while frantic efforts were made by more than 3,000 rescue workers, black smoke and acrid fumes poured out of subway ventilation holes, hampered their efforts.

The deadly subway arson was the latest mass loss of life from accidents and attacks on trains around the world.

The intensity of the fire left victims' bodies charred and entangled with each other, rescuers said. The most recent deadly inferno was in November 2000 when just 12 people survived a blaze inside a funicular train in the Austrian ski resort of Kaprun. A total of 155 people most of them skiers died when the fire started, possibly triggered by a faulty electric heater.

Victims were trapped inside the carriages of the train which was 600 metres into the two-mile-long mountain tunnel when the fire started.

In July 1995, Paris' rail system was hit repeatedly by bombers. The worst attack happened on July 25 at the Saint-Michel suburban railway (RER) station.

A gas bottle packed with explosives and nails was detonated, causing horrific injuries to many passengers. Eight people died and more than 200 were injured. In March 1995, members of the Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas into the subway system of Japan's capital. Twelve people died and 5,000 more were taken ill as the nerve agent spread. Several members of the cult were convicted of murder and sentenced to death.