Daily Times

TEHRAN: At least 31 people were killed in Iran on Friday when a passenger train crashed into a broken-down inter-city express, the provincial governor said.

Over 70 people were admitted to the hospital after the crash in the Northern Semnan on the mainline between the capital Tehran and second city Mashhad, Mohammad Reza Khabbaz told state television.

The express train – operating one of Iran’s longest distances services from Tabriz in the northwest to Mashhad – had been forced to stop between stations by a mechanical failure, saidKhabbaz.

Two of its coaches caught fire while the front four coaches of the second train derailed and overturned. “One minute I was sleeping and the next I was being carried out of a coach on fire,” one hospitalised passenger said.

Initial reports suggest that the express train was stopped in a station when the accident happened, but Khabbaz said it was some four kilometres outside the Haft Khan station.