44 Dead In Two Passenger Trains Collision In Iran
MEP: At least 44 people have been killed and dozens more injured after two passenger trains collided at a station in Iran’s north-central province of Semnan, officials said.
The accident occurred on Friday at the Haf-Khan station near the city of Shahroud around 7:40 a.m. local time, Head of the Emergency Medical Service, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told the Tasnim news agency.
“I was sleeping when the crash happened. I thought it was an air strike … When I opened my eyes, there was blood everywhere,” a hospitalized passenger told state television.
Iranian state television broadcast footage of the wreckage showing four derailed carriages, with two of them on fire.
“The initial investigation suggests that a mechanical failure, possibly caused by cold weather, forced the express train, operating between the cities of Tabriz and Mashhad, to stop (at Haft-Khan),” Semnan provincial governor Mohammad Reza Khabbaz.
