40 killed in Iran train crash
ANKARA: At least 40 people were killed and 100 injured when an Iranian passenger train collided with another at a station about 250km east of Teheran, state television reported.
It said the death toll was likely to rise and that President Hassan Rouhani ordered an acceleration of rescue efforts as well as an investigation into the cause of the crash in northern Semnan province.
Video footage showed four derailed carriages, two of them on fire. A spokesman for Iran’s Red Crescent, Mostafa Mortazavi, told the semi-official Fars news agency that firefighters were trying to control the blaze.
“I was sleeping when the crash happened. I thought it was an airstrike... When I opened my eyes, there was blood everywhere,” a hospitalised passenger said.
Fars quoted Semnan provincial Governor Mohammad Reza Khabbaz as saying the death toll was expected to increase. It was not clear how many passengers had been on the trains, but Fars said 100 had been rescued. The semi-official Mehr news agency said four of the dead were railway employees.
Khabbaz told Iranian television it appeared that a train entering the Haft-Khan station on the outskirts of Shahroud ploughed into another that had broken down there.
“The initial investigation suggests that a mechanical failure, possibly caused by cold weather, forced the express train, operating between the cities of Tabriz and Mashhad, to stop (at Haft-Khan),” Khabbaz said.
A local official told state TV that the remote location of the crash had slowed rescue efforts.
“So far only one helicopter has reached the scene because of access difficulties,” said local Red Crescent chief Hasan Shokrollahi.
Iran’s rail network aged badly under economic sanctions imposed over its disputed nuclear programme, making it difficult to modernise rolling stock, and safety standards suffered. Reuters