Ten killed, 27 injured in South Sumatra train crash
Ten killed, 27 injured in South Sumatra train crash
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A cargo train slammed into a passenger bus in South Sumatran town of Baturaja on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 27 others.
The accident, the latest of a series of train accidents across the country, reportedly took place at about 4 a.m. at an unmanned railway crossing in Baturaja.
The train, which was carrying coal, rammed into a bus with more than 30 people on board.
"We don't know yet precisely what caused the accident, but we received reports from the scene that 10 people were killed and 27 others were injured," Lukman Alkohar, spokesman for the railway company in South Sumatra province, told Jakarta-based El-Shinta private radio.
He said that apart from being unmanned, the railway crossing also had no protective barrier.
Lukman said that all of the victims were passengers on the bus, traveling from North Sumatra town of Medan heading to Jakarta.
An official at the Palembang general hospital, South Sumatra, told DPA that at least 12 people remained at the hospital with serious injuries.
The Wednesday accident was the latest in a series of train accidents in the country.
On July 24, a passenger train slammed into a packed bus in North Sumatra, leaving at least nine people dead and 23 injured.
On July 6, at least 25 passengers on a Serelo economy-class train were injured when their train collided with another train near a station in Banjarsari subdistrict, South Sumatra.
No one was killed in the accident in Lahat, which happened only a week after four people died in a train accident in Jakarta.
A railway researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Science, Taufik Hidayat, recently blamed a lack of discipline as one of the main causes of train accidents.
He said the Ministry of Transportation was busy expanding the operations of PT Kereta Api Indonesia while doing little to maintain existing equipment or enhance the company's human resources.
As of June this year, according to ministry data, there have been 60 train accidents which have claimed 52 casualties. Last year, 127 train accidents took place and claimed 35 lives.