/ 25 April 2005

Many killed in train smash in Japan

At least 53 people were killed and more than 400 people injured on Monday when a commuter train derailed and smashed into an apartment building in western Japan, firefighters said.

”We have confirmed the deaths of 28 males and 25 women,” said a spokesperson for the fire department in Amagasaki after three bodies were pulled out of the rubble.

A spokesperson for Hyogo prefecture police said 417 people were injured.

Four carriages were derailed in the collision, with one carriage smashed into the side of the apartment building and another wedged beside it, according to the railway operator JR West.

It was Japan’s worst accident since November 1963, when 161 people died in Yokohama near Tokyo when a freight train collided with a truck and was then hit by two passenger trains from opposite directions. — Sapa-AFP