The death toll in the head-on collision between a packed passenger train and a freight train in northwestern Zimbabwe rose to 46, police said on Sunday. A railway worker who might have given a wrong signal was arrested and tested for alcohol, media reports said.
Rudo Muchemenyi of the western Matabeleand province police department told state television four more bodies were retrieved during Sunday from the train wreckage.
Police had reported 42 people killed in the crash on Saturday and 64 injured, many seriously. All the dead were found in the charred wreckage that was gutted by fire.
Only 11 of the dead have been positively identified, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation said in its nightly news The transport ministry blamed the crash on human error. State television reported the signals on that stretch of rail line -‒ the busiest in the country — had been reported faulty since November.
It said the state railroad company, troubled by shortages of equipment, also reported outages of electrically powered signals across the country, forcing some signalers to revert to handing written information cards to train crews on their scheduled stops.
Both locomotive crews died instantly when the trains collided on a curve in the track near the coal mining center of Hwange, about 300 kilometres from the western city of Bulawayo. At the time of the accident, the freight train was at full throttle, while the passenger train was picking up speed after a recent stop, the state Sunday Mail reported.
The newspaper said a trackside signal official was arrested and his blood alcohol level was tested. The results of the test were not immediately known.
Normally one of the trains would have been diverted on to a side track, while the other continued on the single track line. Hwange is the railway centre for Zimbabwe’s largest coal mine.
Fire destroyed 11 of the economy passenger cars — most of them old cars, paneled and fitted with wood — leaving some of the dead burned beyond recognition, media reported. Many of the train cars were mangled.
The Sunday Mail, reporting from the scene, said rescue workers feared more bodies were still trapped beneath the twisted wreckage.
It reported that an unspecified number of foreign tourists were aboard the train but that all escaped unhurt.
Police said it was believed some passengers were carrying cans of gasoline on the train, state television reported. Acute shortages of fuel have led to black marketeering and hoarding of gas in jerry cans.
The southbound freight train was carrying flammable liquid.
Passenger trains in Zimbabwe have become increasingly crowded in recent months as acute fuel shortages forced many commuter buses, taxis and private cars off the roads.
Muchemenyi, the police official, said passengers headed for Zambia on the main line to Zimbabwe’s northern neighbor and mineral-rich Congo, often carry fuel from Bulawayo for resale across the border at large profits.
Zimbabwe’s government fixes gasoline prices, so the cost is about a tenth of that in neighbouring countries.
Saturday’s crash forced the closure of the rail line between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls. A crash in the same area in 2000 killed 16 people and one in 1983 killed 37 people. A train derailed near Hwange last year after hitting an elephant, injuring 22 people.
Zimbabwe’s economic crisis and its devastating shortage of hard currency have made it nearly impossible for the state railroad company to import spare parts and maintenance equipment for its locomotives and freight cars. – Sapa-AP