Train Wreck Kills 205

At least 205 people were killed and 400 hurt in a train crash in Mozambique on Saturday, Health Ministry officials said.

“We have now received 205 bodies,” said Dr. Yacoob Omar, a director at Maputo’s main hospital.

One passenger who survived the disaster said a derailment occurred after engineers separated freight cars from passenger cars to scale a steep hill.

Radio Mozambique quoted police and fire department sources as saying the train had technical problems with its brakes.

The crash occurred Saturday morning near the town of Tenga in Maputo province, 25 miles from the Mozambique capital, Maputo, Transportation Minister Tomas Salomao said.

The passenger cars were heading to Ressano Garcia on the border with South Africa--a popular weekend trip for Mozambicans going shopping in South Africa.

Details of the crash were still scant.

Once the cars were split into separate trains--one hauling cement, one carrying passengers--one of them rammed the other, causing a derailment, one witness said.

Reports varied as to which train hit which.

Three passenger cars were reduced to mangled wrecks, and bodies littered the crash site--thrown out of the train on impact or crushed under the weight of cement and other goods, witnesses said.

Rescue workers with tractors and construction equipment were trying to free people trapped in the trains’ twisted wreckage.

President Joaquim Chissano canceled meetings in southern Mozambique and returned to the capital. He visited the Maputo hospital mortuary and wards.

Inside the hospital, ward floors were covered in blood, and workers rushed to try to clean them before the president’s visit. The task appeared to be in vain.

The president stood in silence, watching one wailing woman who was awaiting treatment for a gash on her head.

Most of dead and injured were thought to be Mozambican.

“It is a massive tragedy,” Chissano said.

The Cabinet announced a three-day mourning period starting today, and said flags would fly at half-staff.

Health officials issued an urgent appeal for blood.

Omar also said the hospital had appealed to doctors and health workers in the private sector to help treat the injured.

Salomao blamed the crash on the national railway company and said it would have to pay compensation.

“Now we have to deal with funerals and the people who are being treated in the hospitals,” he told state television. “Then we will establish the type of assistance people need.”

Antonio Libombo, an official from the national railway company, said he did not know what caused the crash and declined to comment on Salomao’s statement.

Small railway crashes happen with some frequency in Mozambique, but Saturday’s accident was by far the largest in recent years. Most of the crashes have been blamed on human error, and there have been public demands for better training of railway staff members.