Dozens dead in train accident in DR Congo: railway company | News

Local media quoted the provincial governor as saying 60 people had been killed.

A train crash in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo has left at least 60 people dead, the national rail company and local sources said.

“[Currently] the balance sheet is 61 dead, men, women and children [and] 52 injured who have been evacuated,” Marc Manyonga Ndambo, director of infrastructure at rail operator SNCC, told AFP on Saturday.

Local media quoted provincial governor Fifi Masuka as saying 60 people had been killed.

It was a freight train carrying “several hundred stowaways”, Manyonga said.

“Some of the bodies were still trapped in the wagons that had fallen into the ravines,” he added.

Manyonga said the train was made up of 15 carriages, 12 of which were empty. He was coming from Luen in a neighboring province to the mining town of Tenke, near Kolwezi, the capital of Lualaba province in southern DRC.

It derailed at 23:50 (2150 GMT) on Thursday near the village of Buyofwe, about 200 km (125 miles) from Kolwezi, “at a place where there are ravines”, into which seven of the 15 wagons fell, a- he specified. .

“My team is working hard to clear the track by Monday,” Manyonga added. He did not say how the accident happened.

Another provincial official, Jean-Serge Lumu, told reporters that “seven bodies were found by the families, 53 others are still at the scene of the accident”.

Train derailments are common in the DRC, as are the sinking of overloaded boats on the country’s lakes and rivers.

Due to the lack of passenger trains or passable roads, people use freight trains to travel long distances.

Last October, nine people died after a train derailed in the town of Kenzenze in Mutshatsha territory in the same province.

In 2019, at least 24 people were killed and 31 injured in an accident when a freight train carrying stowaways derailed in Bena Leka settlement, Kasai province.

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