AT least 100 people were killed when a goods train jumped the tracks in the Democratic Republic of Congo overnight Thursday, with illegal passengers thought to be among the dead.
"According to our information, at least 100 passengers have perished and dozens have been injured in the derailment of a goods train,`` said government spokesman and information minister Toussaint Tshilombo Send.
The United Nations mission in Congo (MONUC) said earlier that at least 68 people died and 120 were injured when the train derailed some 170km north of Kananga, the capital of Western Kasai province.
State railway operator SNCC official Medard Illunga said the unusually high death toll for an accident involving a goods train had to do with "clandestine passengers who habitually travel aboard goods carriages unbeknownst to SNCC agents".
"Several bodies have been found crowded into the wagons,`` Mr Illunga said.
The SNCC set up an inquiry to determine the cause of the accident, the second in Western Kasai province in the space of three weeks, while the Government has asked the transport ministry to rapidly conduct its own probe.
The train linked the cities of Ilebo and Kananga, which are some 300km apart. It derailed when it met travelled over a slope near the Lwembe River, the SNCC said.
Train accidents are relatively frequent in the DRC, where the colonial-era rail network has undergone little maintenance since independence in 1960.
