At least 50 killed in Japanese train accident

AMAGASAKI, Japan - A crowded Japanese commuter train derailed and slammed into an apartment building today, killing at least 50 people and injuring hundreds in Japan's worst train accident in more than 40 years.


As darkness fell nearly nine hours after the accident, rescue workers toiling behind blue plastic sheeting were trying to retrieve several people believed to be alive in the wreckage embedded in the building's first-floor car park.


About 300 people were taken to hospital, a police spokesman said. It was not known if the injured included anyone from the apartment building, which was located just 6 metres from the train tracks, he said.


Five cars derailed in the accident, which took place shortly after the morning rush hour in a residential area near the city of Osaka, about 400 km west of Tokyo.


The train was carrying about 580 passengers.


Railway officials said the cause was not immediately apparent, but that calculations had shown that a train could derail if it were travelling at nearly twice the speed limit at the site where the accident occurred.


Rescuers in hard hats clustered near the twisted remains of the front two cars, one of which had been smashed to less than half its normal width, using cutters and ropes to get inside.


Passenger Tatsuya Akashi, who had been on his way to work, told public broadcaster NHK it felt as if the train had speeded up as it went around a curve.


"I thought there were some strange swings, and then the train derailed. No one knew what happened and everyone kept screaming," he said.


It was the worst train accident in Japan since 1963 when about 160 people were killed in a multiple train collision at Yokohama, near Tokyo.


"There was no side to the car any more, and bleeding people were crawling out. I heard others screaming 'it hurts, it hurts"', a woman in her 20s told NHK.


Soldiers from Japan's Self-Defence Forces were dispatched to the scene to help with rescue efforts.


Operator West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) said the cause of the derailment was under investigation but it confirmed that the train had over-shot the station at its previous stop.


"We do not know yet the cause of the accident. The priority for now is to rescue the passengers," West Japan Railway President Takeshi Kakiuchi told a news conference.


Company officials said the train's driver was a 23-year-old man with 11 months experience. At a later news conference, they said the same driver had over-shot a station last June.


Passengers said the train had been late leaving the previous station and that it seemed to be travelling faster than usual.


Officials said the speed limit at the site of the accident was 70 km per hour.


Calculations showed that derailments were possible at a speed of 133 km per hour, they said, although they did not know how fast the train had been going.


"The train over-ran a stop at the previous station and so it backtracked," a visibly shaken man in his 20s, his face bloodied, told NHK. "So I guess the driver was in a hurry because the train was running late.


"The train was moving so fast, we hit a turn and I didn't think we'd make it," he added. "Then the train derailed."


Japanese trains generally have a good safety record.


In Japan's last major accident, in March 2000, five people were killed and 33 were hurt when a Tokyo subway train ripped away the side of a carriage of an oncoming train that had derailed in its path during rush hour.


In May 1991, 42 people were killed and more than 600 injured in a crash in Shigaraki, western Japan.


Shares in JR West closed down 3.6 per cent in a slightly higher overall market.


- REUTERS