Fourteen killed in train accident

JAKARTA (JP): Fourteen people were killed and 87 injured, 22 of them critically, when a packed train left its tracks and plunged into a ravine in Tasikmalaya regency, West Java, on Monday night, police said yesterday.

Spokesman for the Tasikmalaya police precinct Chief Corporal Nur Samsi told The Jakarta Post by telephone that preliminary investigations indicated that the train had been "overburdened".

Tasikmalaya is about 300 kilometers southeast of Jakarta.

Samsi said the authorities had yet to determine the exact number of passengers traveling on the train, bound for Kediri, East Java, at the time of the derailment.

"It was in fact two trains joined together to accommodate the large number of passengers," he said.

Antara reported yesterday that the two trains, the Jakarta- Banjar Galuh and the Bandung-Kediri Kahuripan, had been coupled at Cibatu station.

The accident occurred at the Cipeundeuy village, about 25 kilometers west of Tasikmalaya, at approximately 11 p.m. on Monday, about half an hour before the packed train would have arrived at Tasikmalaya station, Nur Samsi said.

"It happened when the train was running at a high speed. Ten of the 13 cars derailed and plunged into the ravine," he said.

Tasikmalaya hospital could not accommodate all of the victims, he said, and many of them had to be rushed to the hospital in Garut, more than 25 kilometers from the crash site. Among those killed in the accident was the train's engineer Supardi.

Antara quoted survivors as saying that they had felt the train swaying as soon as it left Cibatu with the additional cars.

Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto and West Java Governor R. Nuriana were among government officials who inspected the crash site yesterday.

Haryanto said the government would need about two days to recover the cars trains from the ravine and repair the damaged railway tracks. (pan)