Passenger Trains Collide in Eastern China

BEIJING — A predawn collision between two passenger trains in Eastern China on Monday has killed at least 43 people and injured 247, according to Xinhua, the state news agency, making it one of the deadliest rail accidents in recent years.The two trains, one heading from Beijing to Qingdao and the other traveling between Yantai and Xuzhou, collided at 4:40 a.m. in the town of Zibo, Shandong Province. Witnesses said one train derailed at a bend and then struck the other, throwing at least ten cars into a ditch. Wire reports quoted a rail official saying that a new timetable introduced on Monday might have contributed to the crash. Last September, a collision involving two trains took place on the same line, although there were no deaths. In January, 18 track workers were killed on the Beijing-Qingdao route after they were struck by a train traveling 75 m.p.h. in the dark. Chinese newspapers frequently report railway fatalities, although most of them involve small numbers of deaths from collisions between trains and vehicles at track crossings. China has one of the world’s most heavily used rail systems. In recent years, at least $100 billion has been spent on improvements and expanded service. Reached by phone on Monday morning, hospital officials in Zibo said the injured began arriving around 5 a.m. with about 100 ambulances ferrying the injured to local hospitals. A medical worker at the People Liberation Army’s No. 148 Hospital said more than 82 of the injured had been brought to the hospital and that family members had begun arriving by late morning. An emergency room worker at Zibo Central Hospital said 40 patients were being treated there. “Now the situation of patients is stable,” she said. “Some have lower back fractures, some have fractures to the chest and some have broken legs.”