Two fuel trains collided at a North Korean railroad station near the Chinese border Thursday, igniting a deafening explosion that rained debris in a wide area around, South Korean media reported. One television channel said as many as 3,000 people might have been killed or injured.

Pyongyang declared an emergency in the area, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. The North's official KCNA news agency did not mention the disaster.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, had quietly passed by rail through the station as he returned from China before dawn some nine hours earlier. It was not clear what caused the crash.

But a South Korean official, quoted on condition of anonymity by South Korea's all-news cable channel, YTN, said it appeared to be an accident.

The collision reportedly took place about 1 p.m. in Ryongchon, a town 12 miles from China's northeastern Liaoning Province. One train was carrying oil and the second had liquefied petroleum gas, media reported.

"The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded," Yonhap quoted witnesses as saying. "Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky and drifted to Sinuiju," a North Korean town on the border with China, it said.

YTN reported that the number killed or injured could reach 3,000. A YTN reporter in Seoul, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP the network's casualty count came from a South Korean government official, whom he declined to identify.

A South Korean Defense Ministry official confirmed "a large explosion near Ryongchon station," Yonhap reported. "We have yet to find out the cause of the incident, the kind of explosion and how many died," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Yang Jong-hwa, a spokeswoman of South Korea's Unification Ministry, said her organization could not immediately confirm the reports; the ministry is in charge of relations with North Korea. The Defense Ministry could not comment.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration had no information on the collision.

The accident apparently resembled a disaster in Iran on Feb. 18, when runaway train cars carrying fuel and chemicals derailed, setting off explosions that destroyed five villages. At least 200 people were killed.

News events within its borders are usually difficult to confirm independently. North Korea's infrastructure is reportedly dilapidated and accident-prone, AP reported. 

The trunk line on which Thursday's accident reportedly occurred, the main rail link between China and North Korea, was first laid during the Japanese occupation more than 60 years ago.

YTN reported that the casualties included Chinese living in the North Korean border region, and that Chinese in Dandong – a bustling industrial city on Yalu River – were desperate to learn about their relatives. Chinese and North Korean traders frequently cross the border at Dandong.

Some of the injured were evacuated to hospitals in Dandong, it said.

(China Daily April 23, 2004)