Africa News Summary : News Headlines : Discussion Forums

Tuesday, June 25, 2002 - Web posted at 4:00:31 pm GMT

DODOMA, Tanzania, June 25 (Reuters) - Rescuers struggled to pull more victims from the mangled wreckage of Tanzania's worst rail disaster on Tuesday amid fears the death toll could mount above 200.

Panic-stricken relatives of passengers known to have been travelling on the train mobbed the entrance to the main hospital in the capital Dodoma for news of loved ones missing since Monday morning's crash.

"Why won't they let us in?" said Asha Mohammed as officials closed the hospital gates to limit the chaos. "I need to see if my brother is alive."

Hard-pressed emergency services prepared to stack bodies in a sports stadium after the hospital and adjoining mortuary were overwhelmed by the number of dead and injured being brought in from the crash site 100 km (60 miles) away.

"There are bodies that are still piled up inside the wagons," Deputy Health Minister Hussein Mwinyi said. "A decision has already been made to transfer the dead to a nearby stadium for identification."

Outraged Tanzanians called for an inquiry.

"It's an unmitigated disaster," Dodoma member of parliament Hashim Saggaf told Reuters. "I've never seen anything like this. It was just terrible."

An editorial in the state-owned Daily News said: "Horrific, horrendous, shocking, grim, ghastly, harrowing, gruesome -- no words can describe accurately what occurred on the central line."

PASSENGERS LEAPT FROM TRAIN

Survivors described how passengers had leaped from the speeding train in a desperate attempt to survive as the driver ran through packed carriages screaming that the train, with 1,000 people aboard, was out of control.

The train was climbing a hill when it suffered a mechanical failure and rolled backward towards an approaching freight train, said Isaac Mwakajila, assistant director-general of Tanzanian Railway Corporation.

Hospital officials said the death toll was at least 200, but was likely to rise as the grisly work of recovering the bodies from the mangled wreckage continued.

"At least 200 people are dead but we fear there could be more," John Mtimbwa, the regional medical officer in Dodoma, told Reuters on Monday. A number of corpses were still trapped under the wreckage.

Mwinyi said on Tuesday it was difficult to say what the exact toll was as rescue workers were still taking victims from the wreckage.

Last month about 200 people died and hundreds more were injured in Mozambique when engineers used large stones and metal rods to stop the carriages of his train from rolling downhill after the engine lost power. The makeshift brakes gave way.

"It is a very bad situation, the hospitals are full to capacity and we have a shortage of doctors," Anna Abdallah, the minister for health and a medical doctor, said on Monday.

The trains collided between Igandu and Msagali, southeast of Dodoma and about 400 km (250 miles) west of Tanzania's main city and commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa visited Dodoma hospital to comfort the injured. Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye, who visited the scene on Monday, announced two days of official mourning. Nampa-Reuters