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Death toll in Congo train disaster rises to 76 |
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(06/23/2010)
Congo, PAB-Online
76 people were killed in Monday's rail disaster in Yanga,
Congo-Brazzaville, according to the latest toll, a member of the crisis
unit in Pointe Noire told AFP on Wednesday.
"This morning, the new toll is 76 dead. The bodies are all at the morgue in Pointe-Noire," the official said.
The Congo-Brazzaville government on Tuesday issued a provisional toll of 48 dead and more than 400 injured in the accident, and said the search for more bodies would continue.
Survivors spoke of seeing bodies trapped in the wreckage.
Survivor Lucien Koko, speaking from hospital, said the train veered off the tracks after hurtling into a bend at full speed on Monday evening, as it travelled between Brazzaville and the southern city of Pointe-Noire.
"At a bend that the driver went into at full speed, all six carriages where the passengers were derailed. We were thrown by the impact," he told AFP.
"Many people remain trapped. I can talk because I have a wound on my forearm. Friends who were with me are gravely wounded," added the 37-year-old.
Announcing the three days of mourning from Saturday, the government said in a statement it appeared the accident was caused by excessive speed.
Another survivor Julia Nkomouaya, 28, said the injured and trapped waited for several hours for help to reach them.
"Help arrived around midnight, three hours after the accident. A lorry of soldiers took away the injured," said Julia Nkomouaya, 28, from her hospital bed.
"The carriages fell when the train began a bend at full speed. I don't know how I managed to get out," she said, adding that she escaped relatively unharmed but witnessed others, including children, trapped or dead in the wreckage.
"Thank God, I just suffered a wound. I saw bodies and wounded people who were not moving," she said.
The 510 kilometre (315 mile) line is the main link between the capital and Pointe Noire on the Atlantic.
In September 1991, a collision on the same line left 100 dead and 300 injured in the country's worst ever rail disaster.
Monday's crash was Congo-Brazzaville's second major transport accident in the space of a few days after 11 people, including the Australian mining tycoon Ken Talbot, died in a plane crash in Congo's thick jungle on Saturday.
Authorities found the plane's wreckage on Monday near Yangadou, a small mining town where the flight had been due to land.
Six Australians, two Britons, two French and a US national were on the twin turboprop plane chartered by the Perth-based Sundance Resources company headed by Talbot. (AFP/IP)
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