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53 dead in Japan's rush-hour train crash
(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-25 23:52

People thrown away

"Passengers who were standing were thrown across the carriage and passengers who were sitting were slammed onto the floor. It was just chaos," said Tsuneo Hara, an advertising company employee from Osaka, who was hospitalized with a leg injury.

"Some 10 people could not stand up and lay on the floor motionless. Female passengers were just screaming and crying," Hara said.

Rescuers gather around a derailed commuter train that slammed into an apartment building in Amagasaki, western Japan April 25, 2005.[Reuters]

Relatives rushed between hospitals to look at lists for any clue as to whether their loved ones were dead or alive.

"My husband is still missing. I don't know what to do," said a sobbing Naoko Fukunishi after checking the lists at Amagasaki Central Hospital. "We just celebrated his 61st birthday yesterday."

A gymnasium was turned into a makeshift morgue as families -- some stoic and others full of emotion -- went in by twos and threes to see the bodies. Only 11 have so far been identified, a railway spokesman said.

Japan has one of the world's most extensive and safest train networks, transporting some 60 million people -- or nearly half the nation's population -- each day.

It was the deadliest tragedy since 1963 when a freight train collided with a truck in Yokohama near Tokyo and then was hit by two passenger trains from opposite directions. That accident killed 161 people.

"This is a horrible and serious disaster," Transport Minister Kazuo Kitagawa said as he visited the scene yesterday, ordering a "thorough investigation."

Photographs taken inside the train showed metal frames wrenched open by the force of the crash. Dozens of people were lying on the floor, with a few struggling to stand up and flee.

West Japan Railway Co initially said the train crashed when it hit a car but after an initial investigation, it found that the derailment happened about 100 metres before a crossing where a collision could have occurred.

"We do not know yet what caused the accident," JR West's President Takeshi Kakiuchi told a news conference.

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