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.
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