60 dead as Cameroon train derails
HUGE TOLL: Train was crammed with people due to road traffic disruption
AT least 60 were killed when a packed passenger train derailed between Cameroon's two main cities, a hospital source in the capital here said yesterday, giving a new toll the day after the accident.
Almost 600 people were injured when the train, travelling 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 said here.
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 official.
Passengers’ relatives thronged the city’s main hospital to look for their loved ones. At the morgue, “there are 28 unidentified bodies. The identified bodies are at another
after the train derailed while travelling between Yaounde and Douala on Friday. AFP pic
morgue”, said a policeman.
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.
As she waited her turn to enter, another woman, Fadimatou, said, “We have had no news from our sister since yesterday. We don't know whether she is alive.”
Dan Njoya said he had come to the morgue “to see if the body of my 4month-old baby is here”.
Most of those injured in the accident were taken to hospitals in Douala, medical sources said.
On Friday, the transport minister said 55 people were known to have died and 575 were injured.
State-run television reported that many of the injured were in a critical condition and that the cause of the accident had not been discovered.
Rail operator Camrail, a subsidiary of French investment group Bollore, said it had deployed “intervention and security teams” to the site of the accident.
The road bridge collapsed on Thursday night as a result of heavy rain, which also hindered the deployment of rescue services to the scene of the accident. AFP