Train collision kills 70 in China

JINAN (China)—A high-speed passenger train jumped its tracks and slammed into another train in eastern China on Monday, killing at least 70 people and injuring more than 400 in China’s worst train accident in a decade. Authorities were quoted as saying that human error was to blame.
The death toll could rise, with 70 people hospitalized in critical condition after the pre-dawn crash in a rural part of Shandong province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said a total of 420 people had been hurt. No foreigners were among the dead. Injured survivors included four French nationals, a Chinese national sailing coach and a 3-year-old boy.
Xinhua said investigators had ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash. Its English report said it was human error, while its Chinese-language report attributed the crash to negligence without giving other details. Xinhua said, however, that two high-ranking railway officials in Shandong had been fired.
The crash just before the May Day long weekend holiday happened when a train traveling from Beijing to Qingdao — site of the sailing competition during the Olympics in August — derailed and hit a second passenger train just before dawn. Nine of the first train’s carriages were knocked into a dirt ditch, Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said in a statement.—Agencies