Dozens killed in China train crash

A high-speed passenger train came off the tracks and crashed into another train in eastern China today, killing at least 66 people and injuring more than 400, a state news agency reported.

Seventy people were in critical condition after the pre-dawn crash in a rural area in Shandong province, Xinhua News Agency said.

The accident happened near the city of Zibo, when a train travelling from Beijing to the coastal city of Qingdao derailed and hit a second passenger train. About 10 carriages toppled into a dirt ditch.

The second train, travelling from Yantai to Xuzhou, also derailed, although it did not fall into the ditch.

It is not known what caused the first train to derail.

News photos showed rescuers pulling passengers from a carriage that had fallen on to its side. Survivors bundled in white bed sheets from the sleeper cars stood or sat near the wreckage. .

It is not known how many people were on the trains. Most of the passengers would have been asleep at the time of the crash.

A doctor at the emergency clinic of the Zibo Centre Hospital said all major hospitals in the area were treating the injured.

President Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao were monitoring the situation and vice premier Zhang Dejiang and railways minister Liu Zhijun were heading to the site to oversee rescue efforts.

Nine hotels and 34 rescue centres have been set up for the families of the victims, Xinhua said.

Xinhua said the accident had stopped traffic on the Jinan-Qingdao railway, which links the provincial capital of Jinan with Qingdao, the site of the sailing competition for the Olympic Games in August.

It was the second major railway accident in Shandong this year. In January, 18 people died when a train travelling at more than 75mph hit a group of about 100 workers carrying out track maintenance near the city of Anqiu.