NEYSHABUR, Iran - Runaway train cars carrying a lethal mix of fuel and chemicals derailed, caught fire and then exploded hours later yesterday in northeast Iran, killing more than 200 people, injuring at least 400 and leaving dozens trapped beneath crumbled mud homes.
Most of those reported dead were firefighters and rescue workers who had extinguished most of the blaze outside Neyshabur, an ancient city of 170,000 people in a farming region 400 miles east of the capital, Tehran.
The dead also included top city officials - including Neyshabur's governor, mayor and fire chief as well as the head of the energy department and the director-general of the provincial railways - who had all gone to the site of the derailment, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The explosion devastated five villages, where authorities rushed in blood supplies and appealed through loudspeakers for donors. Hardest hit was Hashemabad, where 41-year-old Zahra Rezaie, whose mud home was near the tracks, was cooking lunch for her family when she heard the explosion and felt the ground shake. Then the ceiling collapsed.
It knocked down and broke some dishes. I was sure it was an earthquake
and my first thought was to rush to the school and save my children Rezaie said. Her children were safe.
An Associated Press photographer who arrived in Dehnow, one of the most severely damaged villages close to the train tracks some 500 yards from the blast, said most of the village's homes were flattened.
The houses are all built of clay and nearly every one has been destroyed
like they had collapsed in an earthquake
Hassan Sarbakhshian said. Everyone appears to have been evacuated
he said, adding he could see thick, black smoke billowing about 500 yards ahead.
The blast was so powerful that windows were shattered as far as six miles away. In an apparent indication of the explosion's force, Iranian seismologists recorded a 3.6-magnitude tremor in the area, IRNA reported.
Many of the buildings that collapsed in a Dec. 26 earthquake in Bam, in southeast Iran, also were mud-brick structures. That tragedy killed more than 41,000 people.
Authorities were investigating what caused the 51 cars to roll out of the Abu Muslim train station, outside Neyshabur, at 4 a.m. Forty-eight of the cars derailed on reaching the next stop at Khayyam, about 12 miles away, and caught fire.
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