60 die in Cameroon train crash

AT LEAST 60 people were killed and nearly 600 injured when a packed train derailed between Cameroon’s two main cities on Saturday, as distraught relatives desperately sought news of missing loved ones.

With the dead and injured scattered between different hospitals, authorities were working flat out to cope with the scale of the disaster.

At Yaounde’s main hospital, where the morgue was holding 29 bodies including those of babies, distraught relatives thronged the corridors.

The first person allowed into the morgue, a woman, emerged in tears. “She recognised the body of her sister,” explained one of the people with her.

The train, travelling from the capital Yaounde to the economic hub of Douala, came off the rails near the central city of Eseka at around midday on Friday.

“We have received between 60 and 70 bodies at the station this morning,” a railway official who asked not to be identified told reporters in Yaounde.

The train was crammed with people because a collapsed bridge had made travelling the same route by road impossible.

“Some of the wounded are arriving unconscious. We think the death toll will rise,” said the railway official.

On Friday evening, state-run television reported that many of the injured were in a critical condition. Health minister Alim Garga Hayatou said after visiting some of the injured that more information would be released “once we are in control of the whole situation”.

In the meantime hospital staff were “working hard and efficiently, he added.

At Yaounde’s main hospital, the 29 bodies in the morgue included those of white people, many women and babies, a policeman on duty there said. He had no information on nationalities although the French foreign ministry said one French national was among the dead.

Rail operator Camrail, a subsidiary of French investment group Bollore, said the cause of the crash was under investigation. — AFP