At Least 63 Killed As Speeding Congo Train Derails

At least 63 people were killed and 80 were seriously injured in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province when a train speeding too fast round a bend derailed, a provincial minister said on Wednesday.
Fifty others were trapped inside the goods train after 12 of its carriages flipped off the track in the accident near Likasi, a mining town between Lubumbashi and Kolwezi in the copper and cobalt-rich southeast.
“Evidently the train was going too fast, the driver came to a curve and had to break suddenly leading to the accident,” said Dikanga Kazadi, Katanga’s interior minister.
He said the priority was rescuing those still trapped and a team had been sent to investigate the cause of the accident. A witness said he counted 37 bodies at the scene.
“There were two train engines and two carriages overturned,” he told source, asking not to be named.
Congo’s infrastructure is in tatters after decades of neglect and conflict so people struggle to travel around the vast nation, which is roughly the size of Western Europe.

Posted by Kunda on April 24, 2014. Filed under AROUND AFRICA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry