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Runaway train wagons laden with a lethal cocktail of fuel and fertilisers blew up in northeast Iran on Wednesday, killing at least 183 people — a toll officials expected to rise. State television showed flames licking from mangled, charred train wagons, with thick black smoke billowing into the sky.
‘‘Some 183 bodies have been recovered and others still may be buried under the rubble of a nearby village,’’ said Hassan Hadiani, a spokesman from the governor’s office in Nishapur, 20 km from the blast. He said 260 injured had been taken to hospital and all blazes had now been extinguished in the stricken area close to the city of Nishapur, hometown of mediaeval poet Omar Khayyam.
The state news agency IRNA said the 51 runaway wagons, filled with petrol, fertiliser and sulphur products had been set rolling by earth tremors in the saffron-growing province of Khorasan bordering Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Other officials said the reported tremor could have been the jolt of the blast itself, leaving less clear why the line of wagons had set off down the track, derailed and crashed by a station.
The disaster comes amid political uncertainty, two days ahead of disputed elections in a country still recovering from a December earthquake that killed over 40,000 people in the ancient citadel city of Bam, some 650 km further south.
IRNA said five villages were ravaged in the early morning blast. Ambulances and rescue helicopters rushed to the scene. Television showed overturned carriages jumbled beside the tracks, with homes just metres away.
Windows were shattered for more than 10 km around and the earth could be felt shuddering up to 70 km away. IRNA said the governor general of Nishapur was killed in the blast along with the head of the city’s electricity board, the fire chief and a 26-year old IRNA journalist. —Reuters
