Emergency aid arrives after train blast

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.

Aid workers who were the first outsiders to reach the disaster site in the secretive Communist country this weekend recounted seeing huge craters, twisted rail tracks, rubble and scorched buildings following Thursday’s explosion in Ryongchon, near the Chinese border.

But all of the 1,300 people that North Korean officials said were injured in the catastrophe, along with the bodies of 161 it confirmed were dead, already had been evacuated before the aid workers arrived.

North Korea blamed the disaster on human error, saying a train cargo of oil and chemicals ignited when workers knocked the wagons against power lines.

The statement was unusually frank for North Korea, which is believed to have covered up past disasters and tightly controls the flow of information to its people and the outside world.

North Korean state television announced today that Chinese supplies were headed for Ryongchon, indicating the totalitarian government had notified its population of the catastrophe.

The Korean Central Broadcasting Station broadcast was monitored by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

China said later that the initial batch had arrived.

About 2,000 carpets, 300 tents, food items and other relief materials were shipped to the North Korean border city of Sinuiju, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua said.

South Korea’s Red Cross planned to send instant noodles, bottles of mineral water, blankets and clothing once the means of transportation is organised.

In Canberra, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Sunday his country also would help if Pyongyang asks.

“We are prepared to provide assistance to North Korea if North Korea needs that assistance,” Downer told television’s Ten Network. “But at this stage, they do seem to be coping, albeit not very well, with this disaster.”

Australia maintains diplomatic links with North Korea, but Downer said Australian diplomats had not been among a group of foreign aid workers and envoys who visited the site of the explosion this weekend.

“There was just rubble everywhere and very large craters in the ground. The buildings around were totally flattened, especially the houses,” Red Cross official Jay Matta said by telephone on Saturday. “It’s just a mess everywhere.”

John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman in Beijing, said the railroad station and the immediate surroundings were ”obliterated”.

The aid workers’ visit followed a rare invitation from the North’s communist government, which relaxed its normally intense secrecy as it pleaded for international help.

The explosion destroyed buildings in a radius of hundreds of yards, ripped the roofs off others and broke windows over a wide area, aid officials said.