WORLD / Africa
About 100 killed in train accident in Congo
(AP)
Updated: 2007-08-03 02:33
KINSHASA- About a hundred people died in a train accident in Congo
overnight in which seven cars flipped off of the rails, officials in the
Central African country said Thursday.
Rescue workers had pulled at least 70 bodies out of the wreckage by late
Thursday, but others were still trapped under the rail cars, a witness
told the country's U.N.-backed radio station, Radio Okapi.
The train's locomotive stopped responding to controls as it traveled
between the cities of Ilebo and Kananga late Wednesday, leaving the
conductor without a way to brake, said Medard Ilunga, head of Congo's
state railway agency.
Seven cars overturned in the accident just before midnight, while another
was leaning part way off the track Thursday, he said. Ilunga added that
the conductor was able to detach the locomotive to go for help after the
accident.
"The accident that occurred Wednesday resulted in a heavy toll of about
100 dead," government spokesman Toussaint Tshilombo Send told the
Associated Press. Government reports and those of railway officials had
previously put the death toll at about 30, with 27 wounded.
Send said the president had sent a mission to the site to help in the
rescue effort and comfort the families. He added that an investigation
will be mounted into the accident.
Injured passengers were being carried on people's backs and on bicycles
to a hospital 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from the accident site, Radio
Okapi reported.
The U.N. has sent helicopters with doctors, nurses and medical equipment
to the site about 170 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of Kananga _ the
capital of Congo's Kasai Occidental province, said Kemal Saiki, spokesman
for the United Nation's peacekeeping operation in the Central African
nation.
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