Choking cement dust buried dozens of passengers alive in a horror train crash in Mozambique in which at least 205 people died on Saturday.
Three coaches smashed to scrap metal from the train carrying passengers and a cargo of cement from South Africa lay at the railside in the village of Tenga, 40 km (25 miles) from the Mozambican capital Maputo.
"We pulled out 13 children, dead," said 29-year-old Ilidio Mondlane, who with his wife, was among just four survivors to escape from the second carriage.
"My wife, she is pregnant, and injured badly," said the sobbing man. "To get out, I had to dislodge some dead."
Villagers worked with bare hands to break windows to pull out the injured or retrieve the dead. Cement dust made the work harder and constant coughing could be heard.
Bodies littered the crash site -- thrown out of the train on impact or crushed under seats, under the weight of the cement dust or other goods, witnesses said.
Doctors in Maputo's main hospital said at least 205 people were killed and 22 were in intensive care. The doctors said another 169 passengers were in the high dependence unit, which caters for people who are critical but out of immediate danger.
One survivor said the train was going over a steep hill when it appeared to lose power. He said engineers separated the passenger coaches from the freight wagons, which then rolled back into the carriages.
But another passenger said it was the passenger coaches that crashed into the wagons.
Radio Mozambique quoted police and fire department sources as saying the train had "technical problems" with its brakes.
CEMENT DUST
"We have now received 205 bodies," Dr Yacoob Omar, a director at Maputo's main hospital, told Reuters.
Health officials put the number of injured at more than 400.
"I remember seeing the coach in which I was being pulled off the rail and being smashed into the rail side. Then there was darkness," one woman in her 50s said at the hospital.
"The next time I saw light, I had pain and I was in an ambulance," she said.
In the aftermath of the collision, the mangled wrecks of three passenger wagons lay on their side. Many passengers inside were entombed alive in cement dust, which also coated the living, getting into the eyes, noses and ears of rescuers and survivors.
President Joaquim Chissano cancelled meetings in his home village of Malaice in southern Mozambique on hearing the news of the accident, returning to the capital and visiting Maputo hospital to speak to the survivors.
"It is a massive tragedy," he said.
"The government will mobilise all means at its disposal to assist the affected families, those who have lost loved ones and those who are injured," he added.
The cabinet announced a three-day mourning period from Sunday.
Transport and Communications Minister Tomas Salomao said work to clear the railway line, the main link between Mozambique and South Africa, would continue overnight so that it could be reopened to traffic on Sunday.
"We have a lot of cargo waiting to go to South Africa, and a lot of cargo waiting to come into Mozambique," he said.
(China Daily May 26, 2002)
