Train Disaster Shakes N. Korea

As many as 3,000 people were killed or injured Thursday when two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum gas collided and exploded in a North Korean train station near the Chinese border, South Korean media reported.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, reportedly had passed through the station as he returned from China hours earlier.

North Korean authorities declared a state of alert in the area where the crash occurred, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. It did not give details, but said a type of "state of emergency" had been declared around the town of Ryongchon.

In a sign of the accident's magnitude, the secretive North Korean government cut international phone lines to prevent news of the crash from leaking across its borders, Yonhap said, citing no sources.

The number killed or injured could reach 3,000, South Korea's all-news cable channel, YTN, reported, citing unidentified sources on the Chinese side of the border.

"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 Sinuju," a North Korean town on the border with China, it said.

Yonhap said the explosion occurred about 1 p.m. at Ryongchon, a town 12 miles from the Chinese border. It said Kim passed through nine hours earlier, returning to Pyongyang. Kim travels by train because he has a fear of flying.

Yang 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 likewise was not commenting.

"We are aware of the news reports, but we will not make any comments at this stage," said a spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

YTN reported that the causalities included Chinese living in the North Korean border region, and that Chinese in Dandong — a bustling industrial city on Yalu River — were desperate to learn about their relatives.

Some of the injured were evacuated to hospitals in Dandong, it said.

Chinese and North Korean traders frequently cross the border at Dandong.

North Korea's state-run news agency on Thursday confirmed that Kim had made a secretive trip to China on Monday through Wednesday, but carried no comments on the reported explosion.

The accident resembled a disaster in Iran on Feb. 18, when runaway train cars carrying fuel and industrial chemicals derailed in the town Neyshabur, setting off explosions that destroyed five villages. At least 200 people were killed.

If the death toll approaches anywhere near the initial estimate, Thursday's accident would likely be considered the worst train accident in history.

Several crashes have killed more than 500 people. In 1917, 543 died in Modane, France. In 1989, two Soviet trains were engulfed in flames from a natural gas explosion, and 575 were killed.