TAIPEI: The derailment of a passenger train in Taiwan killed at least 50 people and injured more than 180 people on Friday in the island’s deadliest rail incident in at least four decades.
The express train, which was traveling from the Taipei area and heading south through eastern Taiwan to Taitung, was carrying nearly 500 people, including railway personnel, when it left the tracks around 9:30 p.m. in the morning in a tunnel near the scenic area of Hualien, causing some wagons to hit the walls of the tunnel, local authorities reported. The train, the Taroko Express, is capable of reaching speeds of about 80 kilometers per hour.
As of 6 p.m. on Saturday, 51 people, including two train drivers, two Americans and a French passenger, had been pronounced dead in the incident, while 188 injured had been taken to hospitals, according to authorities. By Friday evening, firefighters had rescued all remaining passengers.
“I share grief with my compatriots,” Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said Friday afternoon. He said the Taiwan Transportation Security Board is investigating the cause of the incident and urged the public to refrain from excessive speculation and to wait for the final results of the investigation.
A preliminary investigation released Friday by Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operations Center indicated that the eight-car train crashed into a construction vehicle that had stopped on the tracks.