North Korean train 'carrying explosives'

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.

The number of dead was at least 54, and 1,249 people were injured, said John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman in Beijing, but he expected the toll to rise as many buildings around the crash site were destroyed.

Initial reports had said as many as 3,000 people were killed or hurt.

Secretive communist North Korea remained silent on the disaster, despite confirmation of yesterday’s blast in the bustling town of Ryongchon by the governments in Seoul and Beijing.

The explosion came after the trains, which were carrying explosives similar to those used in mining, collided, said Sparrow, who said he received the information from Red Cross workers in North Korea.

There have been various reports of what the trains were carrying.

In a dispatch from Pyongyang, China’s official Xinhua news agency said it was caused by the leaking of ammonium nitrate in one of the trains. Ammonium nitrate is used in some explosives, as a fertiliser, and in rocket fuel.

South Korea’s Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said the explosion was triggered by a collision of fuel-laden trains and said South Korea believes there to be “a large number of people killed or injured”.

Media reports in South Korea said there could be up to 3,000 casualties.

The explosion levelled the train station, a school and apartments within a 500-yard radius, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said, quoting Chinese witnesses. There were about 500 passengers and railway officials in the station at the time of the blast, it said.

There was no sign in Dandong, the Chinese border city nearest to the crash site, of injured people being brought out of North Korea. But the city’s three biggest hospitals were preparing for a possible surge of patients.

“We’re ready to offer our close neighbour our best medical help anytime,” an official at Dandong Chinese Hospital said.

The blast also knocked down more than 20 houses, the China’s Foreign Ministry and Xinhua said.

Among the 12 injured Chinese, two sustained serious injuries and the remaining 10 were lightly wounded, Xinhua said.

North Korea declared an emergency in the area while cutting off international telephone lines to prevent crash details from leaking out, the South’s Yonhap agency reported. The North’s official KCNA news agency still had not mentioned the disaster today.

In Seoul, Unification Minister Jeong said China was urging North Korea to send the injured across the border to hospitals in China, but that Pyongyang was instead asking China to dispatch relief workers to the scene.

Officials in Dandong, about 12 miles away from Ryongchon, said they were prepared to provide medical and rescue assistance

“There was an explosion and we believe there was a large number of people killed or injured,” Jeong said. “For the moment, there is no official confirmation from North Korea, and we have difficulties confirming details.”

The chief of the South Korean Red Cross is currently in North Korea on an unrelated business trip and is to assess the accident and evaluate what kind of relief North Korea might need, Jeong said.

The blast happened nine hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il passed through the station on his way home from a three-day visit to China. But given the circumstances and the timing of the blast, Jeong said: “I don’t think sabotage was involved.”

Jeong said the blast was caused by trains loaded with fuel colliding at the station, but did not specify how many trains were involved.