Train crash kills 10 in Philippines

A passenger train has derailed and tumbled into a ravine, killing at least 10 people and injuring 120, Philippine officials said today.

Some carriages ended upside down, forcing rescue workers to smash windows to free survivors, pulling some of them up the ravine with ropes.

Police and railway officials were investigating the cause of the crash.

Officials speculated that the curved track where the accident occurred – the site of a derailment two months ago – had been weakened by looters scavenging rail ties and metal pieces for scrap, a common practice in the Philippines.

The mayor of the town at the crash site, quoting the train crew and other survivors, said the train was going more than triple the area’s speed limit.

The train was travelling to Manila when four of its five cars fell into a 12-metre-deep ravine in Padre Burgos town in Quezon province, about 90 miles south-east of Manila, police Senior Superintendent Leo Kison said.

Rescue workers recovered at least 10 bodies, including those of a mother and her one-year-old baby, Office of Civil Defence administrator Elma Aldea said.

She said three more people were pinned under the wreckage and feared dead.

Around 120 passengers were injured.

The train was carrying about 400 people. The time of the accident – about 2.30am (6.30pm Irish time yesterday) – may have kept the death toll from being higher.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza to oversee the search-and-rescue operation as well as an investigation, her spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.

A woman told DZRH radio the train cars flipped over about seven times. She said she told the conductor to alert the engineer to slow down because the train was “galloping like a horse”.