A Taiwan express train with almost 500 aboard derailed in a tunnel on Friday killing at least 50 passengers and injuring 146. The accident took place after the train hit a trunk that had slid down a bank onto the track. In seven decades, this is the island’s worst rail disaster.
Images gathered from the scene showed some carriages ripped apart, some crumpled by the impact.
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The fire department pointed out that the number of people killed which includes the driver was likely to rise.
“People just fell all over each other, on top of one another,” a woman who survived the crash told domestic television. “It was terrifying. There were whole families there.”
The government of Taiwan said that there were 496 people on the train including 120 without seats.
Among them, many were tourists and people heading home for a long weekend for the traditional Tomb Sweeping Day. The officials said that amongst the dead one was a French citizen.
The train was travelling from the capital city Taipei to the southeastern city of Taitung.
The Taiwan Railways Administration’s deputy director informed reporters that hitting a truck that had slid off a road from a nearby construction site named Feng Hui-sheng, the train came off the rails north of the eastern city of Hualien.
Feng said the manager of the site stopped his truck in front of the site office when he visited the site around 9 a.m. (0100 GMT).
He also said that for now it is suspected that the vehicle wasn’t braked properly, it slid for around 20 meters along the site access road and entered the eastern trunk line.
The manager is being questioned by the police, said the official Central News Agency.