At least 22 people have died and 187 are injured after a train derailed and overturned on a coastal railway in Taiwan.
The train had been carrying more than 360 passengers on a popular weekend route from a suburb of Taipei in the north to Taitung, a city on Taiwan’s southeast coast.
The crash on the popular east coast line injured another 187 people Sunday and left the Puyuma Express lying zig-zagged across the tracks in the island’s worst rail accident for a quarter century.
Rescue services, including soldiers and firefighters, were sent to the scene of the derailment, which left carriages in a zig-zag formation near the tracks.
The railway administration said the families of those killed in the crash would receive compensation of NT$2.5 million (US$81,000).
The speed of the train was not being released due to the pending investigation, but has not been ruled out as a cause.President Tsai Ing-wen has described the incident as a “major tragedy” in a post on Facebook and Twitter.
Passengers who survived the accident recalled how the train had been shaking intensely during the journey and was going “very fast” before it derailed.
Officials said Monday that the search for victims had ended at the accident site in the northeastern county of Yilan and that no more passengers had been found in the carriages.
The Chinese-language United Daily News (UDN) reported that rescue workers found many body parts near the sixth train car. Some passengers were thrown out of the carriage.
China’s policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office expressed “deep condolences” to the families of victims.An investigation was under way to find out the cause of the crash, Taiwan Railways Administration said.
The disaster was Taiwan’s deadliest rail accident since a 1981 collision that killed 30 people, the official Central News Agency said.
