Chinese investigation says speeding caused train collision that killed 70

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ZIBO, China - Investigators blamed speeding Tuesday for China's worst train accident in a decade, which killed at least 70 people and injured more than 400.

The finding was announced by an investigation panel set up by China's cabinet, the State Council, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It came just a little more than 24 hours after the two passenger trains collided in Shandong province in eastern China.

The investigation found one of the trains was travelling at 130 kilometres per hour before the accident, far over the section's speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour, Xinhua said.

The train, heading from Beijing to the coastal city of Qingdao - site of the sailing competition in this summer's Olympics - jumped its tracks and collided with an oncoming train on another track.

The government has already sacked two railway officials over the accident. Xinhua did not say if the engineers of the trains had survived the crash, or whether they were being held as part of the investigation.

Work crews using heavy cranes have cleared the tracks of damaged rail cars, with the line reopening to traffic early Tuesday.

Seventy of the 416 people injured in the crash were in critical condition in hospitals, according to Xinhua. No foreigners were among the dead. Injured survivors included four French citizens, a Chinese national sailing team coach and a three-year-old boy.

One middle-aged woman said she was lucky she was awake when the accident happened.

"I was awake, I just got back from using the bathroom," said the woman, who would not give her name because her relatives did not know she was hurt.

"People who were sleeping, they got crushed to death and wouldn't even know it," she said at the Zibo Central Hospital.

The woman, who had gauze wrapped around her head, said the crash lasted about one minute. "I crawled out of a window. Anywhere there was space to get out, people were trying to get out," she said.

A 12-year-old at the same hospital lay on a bed in the hallway cuddling a stuffed toy dog.

"I was sleeping so I don't remember much. I don't even know how I got here," said the boy, who had a broken leg.

About 1,000 soldiers and armed police were sent to the crash site to seal it off and help with the rescue work, Xinhua said.

Trains are the most popular way to travel in China, and the country's overloaded rail network carried 1.36 billion passengers last year. While accidents are rare, the government is trying to extend and upgrade the state-run rail network and introduce more high-speed trains.

Xinhua said the director of the Railway Bureau in Jinan, the nearest big city, and the bureau's Communist party secretary were both sacked after the crash and face an investigation by the Ministry of Railways.

It was the second major railway accident in Shandong this year. In January, 18 people died when a train hurtling through the night at more than 120 km/h slammed into a group of about 100 workers carrying out track maintenance near the city of Anqiu.

Monday's accident was the worst train crash in China since 1997, when another collision killed 126 people.

© The Canadian Press, 2008