Worst Train Tragedy in Taiwan | Accident Kills at Least 18 and Injures About 170 Others
On Sunday afternoon in North Eastern Taiwan at least 18 people were killed, and 171 others wounded after a passenger train derailed on a seaside route popular among tourists.
With 366 passengers on board the Puyuma Express train was enroute to Taitung, a city on Taiwan’s southeast coast, from Shulin in New Taipei City in the north when the fatal derailment occurred near Xinma Station in Yilan County about 4:50 p.m. local time.
Images on Twitter, Facebook and other social media showed the distorted wreckage of the train carriages in a zigzag pattern near the tracks, and battered passengers lying on the ground. Five carriages appeared to have been overturned.
Worst Train Tragedy in Taiwan
Some commuters were crushed to death, a narrator for the Ministry of National Defense, Chen Chung-chi, said, as informed by Associated Press.
About 120 army men were deployed to the site to help remove bodies so that they could be recognized, he added, but nightfall was slowing down the rescue work.
Video footage showed aid workers and volunteers pulling people from the debris in Yilan County. Most of the life losses were in the 1st car, which flipped over and took the brunt of the accident.
Worst Train Tragedy in Taiwan
On Sunday evening, approximately thirty people were still stuck in the debris.
Some passengers were seen trying to escape through train windows and that bystanders had assembled to help them before emergency crews arrived.
The Taiwan Railways Administration said it had created a disaster response team to examine the reason of the accident.
A local official told a Taiwan newspaper called the United Daily News, that the conductor alleged an anonymous object had been on the tracks and may have triggered the train to derail.
Train accidents are honestly rare in Taiwan, with the last crash of a similar measure taking place way back in 2003, when a train serving the highland tourist destination of Ali Mountain derailed, injuring 156 and killing 17 people.
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Sources: bbc, daily mail, New China TV on Youtube
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