China blames excessive speed for train disaster

BEIJING: Chinese authorities, on this Tuesday, blamed over speeding for the country's deadliest rail disaster in a decade that killed 70 passengers and injured 416 others in a head-on collision between two trains in east China.

The probe panel set up by the State Council, the state cabinet, has said excessive speed was responsible for last Monday's mishap in east Shandong province, official Xinhua
news agency said.

The railway line was reopened for traffic early today, 20 hours after the accident.

The high-speed train from Beijing to Qingdao was travelling at 131 kms an hour in excess of speed limit of 80 kms before it jumped the tracks and rammed into the other
train  from Yantai to Xuzhou, investigators said.

The preliminary probe had blamed "human error" for the pre-dawn mishap.

At least 12 carriages from both trains were derailed and casualties were from both the trains.

Fifty-seven people were killed on the spot and 13 died at hospitals, official Xinhua news agency said, adding most passengers aboard the trains were apparently asleep when the
collision took place.

Two top officials of the Jinan Railway Bureau were sacked within hours after the mishap, the worst since 1997, when 126 people were killed and 230 injured after a passenger train ran into a stationary train in Hunan province.

Authorities said the line between Qingdao, a coastal city that will host sailing event for the Beijing Olympics in August, and Jinan was reopened to traffic, when a cargo train
passed through the repaired section in Shandong province, followed by a passenger train. Thousands of passengers were stranded at railway stations in Jinan, Qingdao and other destinations but they were transferred to long-distance bus stations, local railway
officials said.

The accident occurred just three days before the May Day holiday, when millions of Chinese holiday makers travel by the railway.

Bodies of 26 people had been identified so far, officials said.

"So far, the accident site has been cleaned up and the stranded passengers evacuated," Xinhua quoted Wang Jun, Director of the State Administration of Work Safety, as
saying. Jun is heading the investigation panel.

Chinese government rushed 1,000 soldiers from the People's Liberation Army and armed police as well as 700 reservists to join the effort to rescue the injured, remove
the bodies and seal off the site.

This is the second major mishap in Shandong province this year after a high-speed train from Beijing to Qingdao ploughed through a group of railway workers, killing 18 of them and injuring nine others.

China has the world's most dense passenger and freight traffic. To meet the growing demand fuelled by its blistering economic growth, China has been investing billions of dollars on its rail network and raised the train speeds six times until April last year with railways allowing more than 200 km an hour on 6,227 km high-speed tracks.

By 2020, the total length of high-speed railways is planned to reach 18,000 kms and high-speed train service expected to cover 50,000 kms, benefiting 90 per cent of
China's 1.3 billion population.