Joel 
Joined: 23 Mar 1999
Location: Mornington Peninsula
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| Post subject: North Korea: Hundreds Die in Train Explosion |  |
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Hundreds dead in train explosion
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/World/story_56205.asp
| Quote: | AP - North Korea has broken its silence to call for international help following a train explosion which has left hundreds dead, thousands injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
North Korea filed an official request for international aid with the United Nations humanitarian agency in Geneva, and the UN children's agency said it was preparing to send medicines and first aid supplies.
Officials have told the British ambassador in Pyongyang that "several hundred" people were thought to be dead, several thousand injured, and that "many people could be trapped in the buildings that collapsed," a Foreign Office spokesman said in London.
Red Cross spokesman John Sparrow in Beijing said the blast killed at least 54 people and injured 1,249, but death and casualty figures were expected to rise because of the massive damage.
Citing North Korean Red Cross officials, he said the explosion destroyed 1,850 apartments or houses and damaged 6,350.
Initial reports by South Korean media said 3,000 people were killed or hurt in the disaster at a railway station in Ryongchon, a bustling town about 150 kilometres north of Pyongyang.
North Korean officials said they would take foreign aid workers to the disaster site, Chris Wardle, an official of the Irish aid agency Concern said. The European Union said its aid representatives also would go.
Aid groups "will be travelling up there and making assessment," Wardle said. "Until that happens, we won't know what really happened there."
North Korea restricts the movements of foreigners, and groups that distribute aid to alleviate its food shortages are barred from some areas. Aid workers have been allowed to visit areas struck by drought or floods in recent years, but the government has never arranged such quick access to the scene of a disaster like the train explosion.
Initial reports of the disaster described a collision, but aid workers said North Korean officials blamed an electrical accident with a train carrying explosives.
"What they've said is that two carriages of a train carrying dynamite - they were trying to disconnect the carriages and link them up to another train," Anne O'Mahony, regional director for Concern, told Irish radio station RTE from Pyongyang. "They got caught in the overhead electric wiring, the dynamite exploded, and that was the cause of the explosion."
Accounts of the materials involved differed. Sparrow said the trains were carrying explosives similar to those used in mining. China's Xinhua News Agency reported the blast was blamed on ammonium nitrate - a chemical used in explosives, rocket fuel and fertiliser - leaking from one train. South Korea's unification minister said the trains were carrying fuel.
The blast levelled the train station, a school and apartments within a 500-metre radius, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, quoting Chinese witnesses. It said there were about 500 passengers and railway officials in the station at the time of the explosion.
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing a South Korean intelligence source, reported that a US spy satellite photograph showed that the blast devastated an area within a 1 kilometre radius. It said damage occurred mostly in the densely populated neighbourhoods east of the train station, which included buildings for the military and ruling Workers' Party.
"Hospitals are jam-packed with people injured," Chosun quoted a Chinese witness as saying.
Ryongchon is the site of chemical and metalworking plants, and has a reported population of 130,000.
Those injured "will be suffering greatly from ... burns and those types of injuries that leave you traumatised," Sparrow said. He said Red Cross workers in the North were distributing tents and blankets to 4,000 families, while the international group was putting together kits containing antibiotics, bandages and anaesthetics.
Hospitals in China near the border were put on "high alert," Sparrow said. |
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