North Korea rail explosion leaves 3,000 dead

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.

The collision ignited a deafening explosion that rained debris for more than 10 miles around, South Korean media reported.

The secretive communist government in Pyongyang declared an emergency while cutting off international telephone lines to prevent details of the crash from leaking out, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, had passed by rail through the station as he returned from China before dawn some nine hours earlier. It was not clear what caused the crash, or if it was related to Kim's journey.

But a South Korean official, quoted on condition of anonymity by South Korean cable channel, YTN, said it appeared to be an accident.

The collision reportedly took place about 1pm in Ryongchon, a town 12 miles from China. One train was carrying oil and the second had liquefied petroleum gas, media reported.

"The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded," Yonhap quoted witnesses as saying. "Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky," it said.

Cho Sung-dae, a Yonhap correspondent in Beijing, said his reports were based on residents in the Chinese border city of Dandong who talked with their relatives in Ryongchon.

They described a massive explosion involving a large number of casualties but could not give figures, Cho said. He also said North Korean authorities appeared to shut down the border with China after the incident. Subsequent attempts by his Chinese sources to contact people in Ryongchon failed because the phone lines had apparently been severed.

YTN reported the number killed or injured could reach 3,000. A YTN reporter in Seoul, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the network's casualty count came from a South Korean government official, whom he declined to identify.

A South Korean Defence Ministry official confirmed "a large explosion near Ryongchon station", Yonhap said.