China: 70 killed in high speed train crash

A high-speed passenger train slammed into another train in eastern China today, killing at least 70 people and injuring more than 400 in China’s worst train accident in a decade.

Authorities claimed that human error was to blame.

The death toll could rise, with 70 people admitted to hospital in a critical condition after the crash early this morning in a rural part of Shandong province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It said a total of 420 people had been hurt. No foreigners were among the dead.

Xinhua said investigators had ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash. One report attributed the crash to negligence without giving other details.

Xinhua said, however, that two high-ranking railway officials in Shandong had been fired.

The crash happened when a train travelling from Beijing to Qingdao – site of the sailing competition during the Olympics in August – derailed and hit a second passenger train.

Nine of the first train’s carriages were knocked into a ditch, Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said in a statement.

The second train on its way from Yantai in Shandong to Xuzhou in eastern Jiangsu province was knocked off its tracks although it stayed upright.

Photos showed several of its carriages sitting across the train tracks just outside the city of Zibo.

“Most passengers were still asleep, but some were standing in the aisle waiting to get off at the Zibo railway station,” one passenger told Xinhua.

“I suddenly felt the train, like a roller coaster, topple… to one side and all the way to the other side. When it finally went off the tracks, many people fell on me,” she said.

She said local villagers used farm tools to smash train windows to pull out trapped passengers.

“I saw a girl who was trying to help her boyfriend out of the train, but he was dead,” she added.

Four French nationals – three from one family – were among the injured.

Xinhua said heavy cranes were being used to move the wrecked carriages, with workers aiming to reopen the line by early tomorrow, a little more than 24 hours after the accident.

A coach of China’s sailing team, Hu Weidong, was seriously injured, Dr Zhang Jun was quoted as saying.

“There were grave injuries to his neck and spine, which we fear could cause paralysis,” Zhang told Xinhua.

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

According to the 163.com news website, it was the worst train accident in China since 1997, when another collision killed 126 people.

Trains are the most popular way to travel in China, and the country’s overloaded rail network carried 1.36 billion passengers last year, Xinhua said. That is slightly behind India, which had 1.4 billion passengers last year.