Higher death toll feared in N. Korea rail incident
Thousands of homes hit; dozens reported killed so far
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 8:56 a.m. ET April 23, 2004The death toll from a massive explosion at a railyard in North Korea was expected to grow significantly, as the Red Cross reported Friday that thousands of nearby homes were flattened or damaged by what North Korea’s foreign ministry attributed to explosives going off by accident.
Some 1,850 households were leveled by the blast near the center of Ryongchon, and another 6,350 homes were partly destroyed, said John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman in Beijing who has been in contact with North Korean Red Cross officials.
The death toll so far, he said, was at least 54 dead and 1,249 people injured.
“When you look at the number of buildings destroyed, you have to be afraid of what you’re going to find,” Sparrow said. “We are anticipating that the casualty figures will increase.”
A worker with another aid group said North Korean officials had put the death toll at 150.
North Korea’s government said the explosion occurred when train cars carrying dynamite touched power lines, according to Anne O’Mahony, regional director of the Irish aid agency Concern.
“It says 150 people died, including some school children,” O’Mahony told the Irish radio station RTE by telephone from Pyongyang, the North’s capital.
“What they’ve said is that two carriages of a train carrying dynamite — they were trying to disconnect the carriages and link them up to another train,” she said. “They got caught in the overhead electric wiring, the dynamite exploded, and that was the cause of the explosion.”
International aid agencies have been invited to visit the scene on Saturday, O’Mahony said.
At the Pentagon, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski quoted U.S. intelligence officials as saying that two blasts occurred, each leaving a huge crater.
Tents, blankets for 4,000 families
Red Cross workers were distributing tents and blankets to 4,000 families, while the international group was putting together hospital kits containing antibiotics, bandages and anesthetics.
Initial reports by South Korean media said 3,000 people were killed or hurt in the disaster at a railway station in Ryongchon, a bustling city about 90 miles north of Pyongyang.
The explosion leveled the train station, a school and apartments within a 500-yard radius, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said, quoting Chinese witnesses. It said there were about 500 passengers and railway officials in the station at the time of the blast.
South Korea said China has been urging North Korea to send injured people across the border to hospitals in China, but that North Korea has instead been asking China to dispatch relief workers to the scene. The city is 12 miles from the border with China.
Explosives reportedly for canal project
A North Korean foreign ministry official told diplomats and reporters Friday that the explosives were intended for use in an irrigation canal, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reported from Pyongyang. Initial reports indicated two trains carrying petroleum products had collided, setting off the explosions.
On Thursday, North Korea’s secretive communist government declared an emergency in the area while cutting off international phone lines, Yonhap reported.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, had quietly passed by rail through the station as he returned from China some nine hours earlier.
U.S. intelligence officials discounted speculation that the explosions might have been an assassination attempt, telling NBC News that Kim’s train was on a different track and some distance from the railroad yard.
Ryongchon has a reported population of 130,000 – although it’s not clear whether the number refers to the town itself or the overall country – and is known for its chemical and metalwork plants.
The British Broadcasting Corporation showed on its Web site what it claimed to be a satellite photo taken 18 hours after the explosions. The photo showed huge clouds of black smoke.
“The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded,” the Yonhap news agency quoted witnesses as saying. “Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky.”
YTN, South Korea’s all-news cable channel, reported that Chinese in Dandong were desperately seeking information about relatives who may have been in the area. Chinese and North Korean traders frequently cross the border.
fact file World’s worst train crashes
A list of the world’s worst recent rail accidents prior to Thursday’s collision of two trains in North Korea.
June 6, 1981 In the world’s worst previous rail disaster, at least 800 people are killed when seven rear coaches of an overcrowded passenger train are blown off tracks during a cyclone in India. The coaches plunge into the River Kosi.
Jan. 13, 1985 In Ethiopia several coaches are hurled into a ravine after leaving the rails at a crossing, resulting in 392 people killed.
June 4, 1989 At least 575 people are killed in the Ural mountains, in the then-Soviet Union, when two passenger trains are engulfed in an explosion from a leaking gas pipeline.
Jan. 3, 1990 A packed passenger express crashes into a stationary freight train in southern Pakistan, killing 307 people.
Aug. 20, 1995 At least 350 people are killed in India when two trains collide 125 miles from Delhi.
Oct. 28, 1995 About 300 people are killed when an underground railway train catches fire in the Azerbaijan capital Baku.
Aug. 2, 1999 At least 285 killed in India when two trains collide head-on north of Calcutta.
Feb. 20, 2002 A total of 361 people are killed when fire engulfs a crowded Egyptian passenger train south of Cairo.
June 24, 2002 A passenger train, traveling from Dar es Salaam to the northwestern town of Kigoma in Tanzania, rolls backward on the track crashing into a cargo train, killing at least 281.
Feb. 18, 2004 Almost 300 people are killed and 450 are injured when 51 train wagons filled with gasoline, fertilizer and sulfur products derail and explode near Nishapur, in northeast Iran.
Source: Reuters
Offers of help
South Korea’s government said it was prepared to help if asked. The country’s Red Cross also said it was prepared offer food and clothes.
Officials in Dandong, China, said they too were prepared to provide medical and rescue assistance if requested.
And Dandong’s three biggest hospitals said they were preparing for a possible influx of victims. “We’re ready to offer our close neighbor our best medical help anytime,” an official at Dandong Chinese Hospital said.
North Korea is one of the world’s most isolated countries and rarely allows visits by outside journalists. News events within its borders are difficult to confirm independently.
The communist country’s infrastructure is dilapidated and accident-prone. Its passenger cars are usually packed with people, and defectors say trains are seldom punctual and frequently break down.
Sometimes, trains are stranded for hours at stations until their electricity supply is restored enabling them to continue, some defectors say.
The trunk line on which Thursday’s accident reportedly occurred, the main rail link between China and North Korea, was first laid during the Japanese occupation more than 60 years ago.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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