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.