Up to 60 people were killed when runaway rail wagons loaded with sulphur, petrol and fertiliser derailed and exploded in northeast Iran, a top provincial official told state radio, contradicting an earlier toll of 200 people killed.
”Five villages were destroyed. The number of the people killed in this incident is more than 200,” the head of disasters in Khorassan province, Vahid Barakchi, was quoted as saying.
”The level of this is massive and beyond our preliminary assessments. Our rescue workers workers are trying to remove more than 350 injured people to hospitals in Mashhad and Neyshabour.”
”The explosion happened at a time when the firefighters and the rescue workers were trying to put out the fire,” the official said.
”A number of the firefighters and local villagers were killed in the explosion.”
The massive blast occurred at Khayyam station, near the town of Neyshabour, and was heard in the provincial capital of Mashhad, some 75km away near the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, Irna said.
Local officials said the rail wagons, which were parked in a nearby station, began rolling away in the early hours of the morning. The wagons then derailed and a fire began with several explosions reported, drawing firefighters and curious onlookers to the scene.
Television pictures showed smashed, blackened and burning tank wagons and other rolling stock piled up on the tracks as firemen played hoses on the wreckage.
When the major explosion occurred at around 9.45am [0615 GMT], the Seismological unit of Tehran University recorded an earth tremor measuring 3,6 on the Richter scale in the same area — possibly a reading sparked by the force of the blast.
Officials have not ruled out the danger of further explosions. Hossein Zaresefat, the deputy governor general of Khorassan province in charge of security, said that at least two local officials had been killed in the blast.
They were the governor of Neyshabour city, Mojtaba Farahmand, and the local electricity chief Morteza Fahrian.
”I have also heard some other local officials have been burned to death,” he added. – Sapa-AFP