N. Korean train crash kills up to 3,000

SEOUL, South Korea -- Two fuel trains collided at a North Korean railroad station near the Chinese border Thursday, igniting a deafening explosion that rained debris for more than 10 miles around, South Korean media reported. One television channel said as many as 3,000 people might have been killed or injured.\nThe secretive communist government in Pyongyang declared an emergency while cutting off international telephone lines to prevent details of the crash from leaking out, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.\nThe North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, had quietly passed by rail through the station as he returned from China before dawn some nine hours earlier. It was not clear what caused the crash or if it was related to Kim's journey.\nBut a South Korean official, quoted on condition of anonymity by South Korea's all-news cable channel, YTN, said it appeared to be an accident.\nThe collision reportedly took place about 1 p.m. in Ryongchon, a town 12 miles from China. One train was carrying oil and the second had liquefied petroleum gas, media reported.\n"The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded," Yonhap quoted witnesses as saying. "Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky and drifted to Sinuiju," a North Korean town on the border with China, it said.\nCho Sung-dae, a Yonhap correspondent in Beijing, said his reports were based on residents in the Chinese border city of Dandong who talked with their relatives in Ryongchon.\nThey described a massive explosion involving a large number of casualties but could not give figures, Cho told The Associated Press. Cho also said North Korean authorities appeared to shut down the border with China after the incident.\nSubsequent attempts by his Chinese sources to contact people in Ryongchon failed because the phone lines apparently had been severed.\nYTN reported the number killed or injured could reach 3,000. A YTN reporter in Seoul, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP the network's casualty count came from a South Korean government official, whom he declined to identify.\nA South Korean Defense Ministry official confirmed "a large explosion near Ryongchon station," Yonhap reported. "We have yet to find out the cause of the incident, the kind of explosion and how many died," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.\nYang Jong-hwa, a spokeswoman of South Korea's Unification Ministry, said her organization could not immediately confirm the reports; the ministry is in charge of relations with North Korea. The Defense Ministry could not comment, and the Foreign Ministry could immediately be reached.\nU.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration had no information on the collision.\nThe accident apparently resembled a disaster in Iran Feb. 18, when runaway train cars carrying fuel and chemicals derailed, setting off explosions that destroyed five villages. At least 200 people were killed.\nNorth Korea is one of the world's most isolated countries and rarely allows visits by outside journalists. News events within its borders are difficult to confirm independently, and the state-controlled media is unlikely to provide quick confirmation of such an accident.\nThe communist country's infrastructure is dilapidated and accident-prone. Its passenger cars are usually packed with people, and defectors say trains are seldom punctual and frequently break down.\nSometimes, trains are stranded for hours at stations until their electricity supply is restored enabling them to continue, some defectors say.\nThe trunk line on which Thursday's accident reportedly occurred, the main rail link between China and North Korea, was first laid during the Japanese occupation more than 60 years ago.\nYTN reported the casualties included Chinese living in the North Korean border region, and Chinese in Dandong -- a bustling industrial city on Yalu River -- were desperate to learn about their relatives. Chinese and North Korean traders frequently cross the border at Dandong.\nSome of the injured were evacuated to hospitals in Dandong, it said.\nKim rarely leaves North Korea and when he does, he takes a special train -- reportedly armored and a gift to his father from Stalin -- because he is known to have a fear of flying.\nNorth Korea's state-run news agency Thursday confirmed that Kim made a secretive trip to China Monday through Wednesday but carried no comments on the reported explosion.\nChina, which also confirmed Kim's visit, is North Korea's last major ally, and the countries' ruling communist parties boast of close ties. But while China's experiments with capitalism have transformed it into an economic dynamo, North Korea suffers chronic food shortages and depends on its larger neighbor for aid.