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KINSHASA: At least 100 people were killed when a
goods train jumped the tracks in the Democratic Republic of Congo
overnight Thursday, with illegal passengers thought to be among the
dead.
“According to our information,
at least 100 passengers have perished and dozens have been injured
in the derailment of a goods train,” said government spokesman
and information minister Toussaint Tshilombo Send.
The United Nations mission in Congo
(MONUC) said earlier that at least 68 people died and 120 were
injured when the train derailed some 170 kilometers (105 miles)
north of Kananga, the capital of Western Kasai province.
The injured had been transported
to a hospital near the crash site which is in the center of the
country.
State railway operator SNCC
official Medard Illunga said the unusually high death toll for an
accident involving a goods train had to do with “clandestine
passengers who habitually travel aboard goods carriages unbeknownst
to SNCC agents.”
“Several bodies have been found
crowded into the wagons,” Illunga said.
The SNCC set up an inquiry to
determine the cause of the accident, the second in Western Kasai
province in the space of three weeks, while the government has asked
the Transport Ministry to rapidly conduct its own probe.
The train linked the cities of
Ilebo and Kananga, which are some 300 kilometers (188 miles) apart.
It derailed when it met traveled over a slope near the Lwembe River,
the SNCC said.
Train accidents are relatively
frequent in the DRC, where the colonial-era rail network has
undergone little maintenance since independence in 1960.
Send said that President Joseph
Kabila and Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga had decided to send a
government delegation to the area to evaluate the situation and
assist victims.
--AFP
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