The victims’ assessment should increase, warned the emergency services after a train has derailed in a desert area by hitting an excavator, also making dozens of injured.
Le Monde with AFP
At least seventeen people were killed and dozens of others were injured on Wednesday June 8 when a train derailed after having hit an excavator near Tabas, in the center of Iran, according to media official. “Seventeen people died and 37 others injured were transferred to the hospital. The death toll is expected to increase because several injured are in critical condition,” said the spokesman for the National Rescue Service, Mojtaba Khaledi, quoted by state television. A first assessment reported ten dead.
Photos broadcast by the ISNA press agency show an overturned wagon on the track and four others embedded in each other. According to the rescue operations manager, Mehdi Valipour, five of the eleven train wagons derailed. According to images of the Iribnews channel, the accident occurred in a desert area. The drama occurred on the line between the cities of Machhad and Yazd.
“The train, which was carrying 348 passengers, derailed after having hit an excavator” who was near the rails, said Mir Hassan Moussavi, deputy manager of the ISLAMIC REPHARTS, on the public television channel . The accident occurred at 5:30 am local time (3 hours, French time), according to state television.
series of demonstrations
This derailment occurs two weeks after the collapse of a building under construction in the southwest Iran, which cost the lives of 43 people. On May 23, the Metropol building, under construction in Abadan, one of the main cities in the province of Khouzistan, in the southwest of the country, partially collapsed in the heart of a very frequented street.
This disaster, one of the deadliest in Iran, has led to a series of demonstrations across the country in solidarity with the families of the victims and against the authorities, accused of corruption and incompetence. Night demonstrations took place in Abadan and in other cities, especially in the center of the country, to cry the victims and claim the pursuit of officials.
Justice said that he had arrested thirteen people, including the mayor of Abadan and two former mayors, accused of being “responsible” for the drama. In 2016, 44 people were killed in the collision of two trains that had caught fire in northern Iran. Dozens of others had been injured.