China train collision kills at least three, injures 63 (Roundup)

Jun 29, 2009, 11:00 GMT

   Beijing - At least three people died and 63 others were injured when two passenger trains collided in central China's Hunan province early Monday.

   The collision derailed seven carriages and two locomotives at the railway station in Hunan's Chenzhou city, the State Administration of Work Safety reported.

   A passenger train from the provincial capital, Changsha, to the southern city of Shenzhen hit another train travelling in the opposite direction from Shenzhen to the city of Tongren at 2:34 am (1834 GMT Sunday), the administration said.

   Six of the injured were in serious condition at local hospitals, the semi-official China News Service reported.

   The agency showed photographs of heavy cranes lifting the derailed trains, including several carriages and one locomotive which had overturned.

   Carriages from one of the trains destroyed a house and a shop near the station, killing two occupants of the shop, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

   Local resident Wang Manju, whose house is next to the station, told the agency she was awoken by the noise of the accident and opened her door to see an alley 'filled with dust and an overturned carriage'.

   'The train was twisted. Parts seemed to be torn down,' Wang said.

   'I called the police after hearing screaming from the train,' she said.

   Wang said rescuers recovered the bodies of a mother and son from the debris of the destroyed shop near her house.

   Liu Zhijun, China's minister of railways, travelled to Chenzhou, which is 300 kilometres from Changsha, to oversee rescue work and an investigation into the cause of the accident.

   A fleet of more than 50 buses was organized to take stranded passengers to other stations, reports said.