A TRAIN ran into a group of railway workers, killing 11 and injuring two, officials in the southwestern city of Kunming said, calling it the deadliest rail accident in more than a decade.
The train, which was testing earthquake detection equipment at the time, hit workers on a curved section of track at the city’s Luoyang Town railway station, the officials said.
The station in Yunnan province has resumed normal services, and the cause of the accident is being investigated, they added in a statement.
China’s rail network is the world’s largest, spanning more than 160,000km and racking up billions of trips each year.
Though praised for its efficiency, it has drawn scrutiny after several high-profile incidents, such as a 2011 crash in the eastern province of Zhejiang that killed 40 and injured 200.
Nine people were killed in 2021 when a train in the northwestern province of Gansu ran into workers on a section of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway.
The deadliest crash in China’s rail history took place in 2008, when two trains collided following a derailment outside Zibo city in Shandong, killing 72 people and injuring over 400 others. — Reuters
