More than 100 feared dead in subway arson attack

More than 100 people were feared dead today after a man started a fire on a subway train in South Korea’s third-largest city.

Local reports talked of scores of bodies in the burned carriages. Police said 35 people had been killed and 87 were missing.

More than 130 people were rushed to hospitals around Daegu, 200 miles south-east of the capital Seoul.

A man was under arrest, but police said they had no idea what motivated the attack. Firefighters took three hours to extinguish the blaze, which sent thick black smoke pouring from the entrance of one station.

Witnesses said Kim Dae-han, 46, was carrying a milk carton filled with flammable material when he boarded the subway train.

Police were still not sure exactly what was in the milk carton.

“When the man tried to use a cigarette lighter to light the box, some passengers tied to stop him. Apparently a scuffle erupted and the box exploded into flames,” a police spokesman said.

YTN television showed footage of the chaotic scenes at a nearby hospital, apparently showing the suspect being treated by nurses.

He sat frowning on a bed wearing what appeared to be a hospital smock, his face and hands smudged from soot from the fire. Yu Heung-soo, a Daegu police sergeant, said Kim had been burned on both legs and on his right wrist.

In the minutes after the fire began, traffic came to a standstill in the city centre as ambulances rushed to the scene. Firefighters wearing oxygen tanks rushed down into the subway.

Rescuers brought victims, their faces and clothes black with soot, up to the street on stretchers and loaded them into ambulances.

One witness described the terrifying scene as the fire ignited.

“The man kept flickering a lighter and an old man told him to stop. The man dropped the lighter and the train caught fire,” one male survivor said.

“Several young men seized him, but the fire spread and black smoke rose. Then everyone rushed out.”

The subway was filled with toxic gas, hindering rescue operations.

One man said his friend called on his mobile phone and said he was trapped inside one of the carriages. The man said he had called subway officials and they were unaware of the fire at the time.

Daegu, one of the 10 World Cup football venues last year, has a population of 2.5 million. The city is also a venue for this year’s World University Games on August 21-31.

In 1995, a gas explosion in a subway construction site in the city killed 101 people and injured 143 others.

In South Korea’s last major fire disaster, 55 people were killed in a beer hall in Incheon, near Seoul, in October 1999.