KINSHASA, March 18, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – At least 24 people were killed and 31
injured Sunday when a freight train carrying stowaways derailed in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, police and medical services said.
The accident occurred in Kasai province, in the centre-west of the central
African country.
“We have retrieved 24 bodies, mostly children. It is a provisional toll
because the wagons are still overturned,” a railway police official in Bena
Leka, 140 kilometres (90 miles) north of Kananga, one of the main towns in
Kasai, told AFP.
“Most of the passengers are stowaways because it is a freight train. We
have suspended the search because night has just fallen in the area,” said
the source, who was at the site.
“Several wagons have fallen into the water at the bridge over the Luembe
River and five more wagons are still overturned.”
Serious casualties were taken to the hospital in nearby Kakenge.
“We are overwhelmed by the number of injured. We are working urgently. We
have already admitted 31 injured,” said doctor Jean Claude Tshimanga of
Kakenge hospital.
The national rail company confirmed the derailment.
It is the third rail accident in about a month in central DRC. Five people
were killed in a passenger train accident last month at the station in
Kalenda.
Rail accidents in the sprawling former Belgian colony are frequent and
often deadly because of decrepit track and ageing locomotives dating from the
1960s.