Three students die, 15 injured after falling from train
Yuli Tri Suwarni and Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post, Bandung/Cirebon
Three students were killed and 15 others injured after they fell from an express train in Cicendo, Bandung, West Java province, on Monday.
The victims, all students from a senior high school in Tangerang, Banten province, were hanging out of the doors of the Serayu express when they fell.
The dead students were identified as Adhari, 19, Iwan, 19 and Yoga Budiman, 18. They were from Cicayur village in Pagedangan subdistrict, Tangerang.
Three of the injured victims -- Khaerudin, 18, Iwan, 18 and Asiri, 19 -- were described as being in a serious condition and are being treated at the Hasan Sadikin hospital. The 12 other students suffered slight injuries.
"The dead and seriously injured students sustained wounds to their heads and other parts of their bodies after they fell out of the train," Bandung Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Edi Mulyono was quoted by Antara as saying.
He said the accident occurred at 1:15 a.m. as millions of travelers were returning to Jakarta, Bandung and other big cities and towns across Indonesia after celebrating Idul Fitri.
Police and survivors said the 18 students fell from the train, which was traveling from Kroya in Central Java to Jakarta via Bandung, after the bags belonging to three of them got caught on barbed wire near Bandung railway station.
The students had boarded the train at the Bandung station without tickets.
Adhari and Iwan were killed instantly at the scene, while their friend, Yoga, died on the way to the hospital.
"It's actually the fault of the students as they did not buy tickets. They forced their way on to the train even though it was packed," said Akhmad Sujadi, a spokesman for PT Kereta Api Indonesia's Operations Region II, which covers the Bandung area.
The bodies of the three students were taken home on Monday afternoon aboard ambulances from the Hasan Sadikin hospital.
The 18 students were returning home from a three-day climbing trip to Mount Papandayang in Garut regency, West Java. They arrived in Bandung on Sunday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Java's north coast railroad returned to normal on Monday after being hit by three train accidents over three consecutive days up to Sunday.
The last accident occurred at around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday when a Kertajaya economy-class train derailed at Cabawan, Margadana subdistrict, some five kilometers from Tegal railway station in Central Java.
There were no reports of casualties but the derailment cut the line linking Jakarta and East Java for seven hours. The train, made up of 12 cars, was carrying around 1,000 passengers.
However, by around 4 a.m. on Monday traffic on the accident- prone line was back to normal.
The Kertajaya, which was traveling from Jakarta to Surabaya, East Java, jumped the tracks apparently because its brakes failed, railway officials said.
Earlier on Friday, another economy-class train, the Gaya Baru Malam, derailed at around 4:45 a.m. on Cisanggarung bridge, which links Central Java and West Java.
The accident, which took place at Bantarsari village in Cileduk subdistrict, Cirebon regency, cut the Surakarta- Yogyakarta-Purwokerto-Jakarta line for more than six hours.
In the third accident, two tank cars from a tanker train carrying diesel overturned some 200 meters east of Tegal railway station on Saturday evening.
This brought traffic on Java's north coast line to a halt for more than five hours from around 5:17 p.m.
The train left Maos railway station in Cilacap regency, Central Java, at around 1:30 p.m.
No casualties were reported in the Tegal accident.
Suhartono, a spokesman for PT Kereta Api Indonesia's Operations Region III in Cirebon, blamed the three railway accidents on the age of the rolling stock.
The rolling stock of two of the three trains was produced more than 20 years ago, he said, while that of the Gaya Baru Malam train was almost 40 years old.